A BLOG FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

PerfectIt is the premier consistency-checking software for many professional editors and proofreaders around the world. Developer Daniel Heuman and I sat down for a chat about what's new!

So Daniel was in New York, and I was in a tiny hamlet in Norfolk called Panxworth. Despite the 6,000 miles between us, the construction works going on outside his apartment, and the internet-connection problems in my somewhat rural neck of the woods, we managed to produce a video of our chinwag!

​For those of you who want to jump to specific parts of the conversation, here are the key themes and associated time stamps:

​And below is the conversation in full. Click on the Play button to begin listening. I've included subtitles in case you need to turn the sound off or can't understand our British accents!

There's a full transcript below. I've edited this for readability but essentially it's the words as they were spoken on the day.

THE VIDEO

​THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Louise introduces Daniel HeumanLH: My name is Louise Harnby and I’m a fiction editor, and today I’m going to be talking to the founder of Intelligent Editing and the developer of a piece of software beloved by many editors all over the world. And that’s PerfectIt.

Before Daniel and I start chatting about all the PerfectIt news, Daniel’s going to tell us a little bit about what PerfectIt does, because some of you might not know. So over to you Daniel!

What PerfectIt does and why it’s usefulDH: Thank you! It’s lovely to speak to you! This is very exciting. I don’t know that they’ve ever done a video interview like this before so thank you! OK. PerfectIt – for the people who have not come across it before (which is probably exactly who won’t be watching this, but hopefully they are!)

LH: You never know!

DH: You never know! Exactly! So PerfectIt is mostly consistency-checking software, and the key place where it comes in is that when you’re editing work it’s almost always under, you know, time pressure, and with a pressure to produce perfect work.

It’s ultimately dealing with the fact that everything is going to be on a budget. So given a limited time, what is the best document you can produce? And PerfectIt really fits in there. It saves time; it helps you edit faster.

And the way I was trying to explain it the other day was at the ACES conference. I have new way of explaining it ... I thought a little bit about what gets people into editing. And I think that without delving into the deep psychology of what makes anyone an editor, I think one of the things that does not drive people is the difference between tiny consistency mistakes.

So, yes, it’s fun sometimes when you spot ‘e-mail’ with a hyphen in one place and not in another but mostly that’s not what’s driving people. People get into editing because you care about words, you like reading, you care about communication, you want to explain stories, you want to help people connect better with readers.

And these little tiny mistakes that take so much time to spot are not the reason. They are a distraction. They’re significant because they jump out at readers but they’re not the reason why we get into this. And they’re certainly not the reason why one should be spending a lot of time on a document.

LH: And you’re so right because they take so long to deal with. I’ve had manuscripts before where, actually, particularly if an author’s got a budget, people like me are spending perhaps hours and hours and hours when we’re using just our eyes, dealing with these tiny inconsistencies, which as you say are red flags.

And, yet, actually what we want to do is immerse ourselves in the narrative in front of us and to make it better. And the more time we can spend focusing on the flow of the words ... because every time you come across a hyphen that’s inconsistent, or inconsistent capitalization, as an editor, you’re dragged out of the flow of the work as well.

And so being able to do that, to save time by having a piece of software like PerfectIt to do that for you is just wonderful. And you still get the pleasure of knowing that you’re bringing this consistency to the work. But it is back-breaking doing that manually. I think that’s the thing that a lot of editors feel. It’s just back-breaking work.

And I would rather an author paid me to do other things with my time. I want them to feel that I’m going to do those things but I don’t want to have to spend more time than necessary doing it, and that’s where your software comes in.

DH: Absolutely, and we put on the homepage something like: you spend the time on what matters most, which is your words and their meaning.

LH: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it.

PerfectIt Cloud – the solution for Mac userLH: So, Daniel, in the past, PerfectIt’s only been available to Windows users.

Well, that’s not quite true. I do have Mac-using friends who have been able to use PerfectIt but they have to be running something like Parallels, or I think it’s called VM Fusion Ware or something. Or they’ve had to go buy a cheap Windows laptop.

So I suppose that’s the thing that everybody’s talking about. Like, what’s new for Mac users?

DH: That is the news! So first off, it’s been touching and amazing, the extent to which people have been going to use PerfectIt.

Like you say, they’ve been installing Parallels. People have been buying computers to run this program, which is touching. I know that buying another computer doesn’t cost as much as it used to but, still. But for Mac users who hate Windows and just run it for one program has been phenomenal to see. But yes, no longer!

So we are producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is ... you’re going to have to forgive ... in the background you can probably hear the construction noise! I’ll do my best to speak over it. So we’re producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is an Office Store add-in.

And the great thing about Office Store add-ins is that they are compatible in any version of Office 2016. So if you are on a Mac, if you’re on a PC, if you’re on an iPad, even in Word Online (which I don’t know that anyone actually uses), no matter which version you’re on, you see the same add-in. So the functionality is exactly the same across.

And we’ve been developing this for ... I mean, you know, the amount of times people have heard me saying, ‘A Mac version is coming soon. It’s just a few months. It’s just a few months.’

But, no, as of 26 June we will have PerfectIt Cloud, which brings compatibility to Mac and to iPad for the very first time. So it’s really exciting!

Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud?LH: So what about Windows users? I have PerfectIt 3. I’ve had all the versions since it first launched. I work on a PC. Should I rush out and get PerfectIt Cloud?

DH: In a word, no. So the introduction of PerfectIt Cloud is primarily for Mac and iPad users at this stage. So if you’re using PerfectIt 3, if you’ve got a Windows PC, that’s still going to be the best version that we offer.

And it’s going to be strange because PerfectIt Cloud looks so much better! The interface is even easier than it was before. It’s a beautiful product, but underneath there are a few things that PerfectIt 3 can do that we haven’t been able to do for Cloud yet.

So the most important one of those is customization of styles. That’s still going to take some time to bring into PerfectIt Cloud. The ability to check footnotes – we’re going to be dependent on Microsoft for them to make some changes before we can bring that in.

So if you have PerfectIt 3, if you have a PC, in most cases the thing to do is not to rush out, and not to buy this at least until we produce a new version for the PC, which will be PerfectIt 4.

There’s one exception, which is, you know, all those people who ... the ones, the amazing wonderful users that you’ve described who have gone and bought VMware, and Parallels, and even separate computers.

A bunch of those users are really frustrated with having to turn them on every time, and going through Windows updates, which take forever. And just to get PerfectIt up and running takes two hours. And it’s saving them a lot of time so they do it, but if you’re one of those people who has both a PC and a Mac, in those cases, yes, you would.

Not all the options are included but it’s close enough that you may not want to be uploading and updating your Windows computer each time just to run PerfectIt.

LH: Yeah, and I suppose also for people perhaps who are, I don’t know ... I was thinking about the increasing number of editors who are location-independent. And, actually, maybe they don’t always have the latest ... you know, they’re don't want to be worried if their computers break ... and the idea perhaps of just knowing that it doesn’t matter which PC you’re on, or which Mac you’re on, that if you’ve got something, a machine in front of you, you can do your work and you can access the core functionality of PerfectIt wherever you are.

And that’s an important thing, I guess. I mean, I’m not location- independent. I am very much dependent! I’m in Norfolk with a rubbish broadband speed and so I’m kind of quite keen to keep things offline and local when I can. But knowing that I’ve got the choice – that will be a big issue for me.

The subscription model and a new lower priceLH: Can we talk about price now? Because in the past, once every two or three years, you bring out a new version, and I’ve paid you, I don’t know, $90? I can’t remember the price off the top of my head. So that’s the way it’s worked. But you’re doing things slightly differently now, aren’t you?

DH: Yes. So we are switching to a subscription ... sort of a subscription.

And I know the minute I use that word people are turning off this video, don’t want to know anything more. because everyone is sick to death of subscriptions with, you know, Netflix and Amazon, and, oh my God, you can get a subscription for your vegetable delivery now, which is bonkers!

But I think what we’re doing is really different to that. We switched to a once-a-year payment. At this point at least, there’s no handover-your-credit- card or anything like that. You pay each year if you want to continue using it.

And switching to that kind of model means we can drop the price by a lot. So instead of being a $99 one-off purchase, we’ve made it $70 per year.

And on top of that, we’ve really dropped the price for, you know, independent editors. So we’ve worked with as many of the editing societies around the world as we can – certainly all the big ones – to have a kind of a discount.

And that’s going to be an additional 30%, so the price is going to be just $49 per year for independent editors who are, you know, a member of any of the big editing societies anywhere in the world.

So subscriptions mean we can get down the price down a lot, and they mean we can create a really compelling, simple offer, which is that you will buy PerfectIt and then you will get any version you want on any number of devices you want, and not pay a separate charge, which I think is really what bothers a lot of people.

So you buy PerfectIt and you can install the PC version on your PC, you can install the Cloud version on your iPad. You only pay once for that and you don’t get stuck with that additional charge you described, which was the upgrade charge.

So, yes, we used to have a one-off price but people liked this product and much more than 60% of people paid the upgrade price anyway. So, really, there was a hidden recurring element.

And by switching to ... we can call it a subscription, we’ve made everything included in that price very transparent. And you get all the upgrades, you get all the updates, you get support. So I think the way we’ve switched the pricing is really gonna be attractive, and especially attractive for independent editors.

The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and supportLH: I think it’s wonderful because, I mean, I’m a big fan of the subscription model, even with things like Microsoft Office, because I’m a professional, I want the latest software, and I want it to work in an environment that’s stable as well. And so I like having the most up-to-date version of Word.

I had a situation a few years back when I first plonked a download of Windows 10 on my Windows 8, or Windows 7 computer or something, and I was trying to get PerfectIt to operate in an environment basically with two operating systems, and guess what? It wasn’t happy.

And so at that point ... because PerfectIt was key to my editorial day-to-day working, it was one of the things that triggered me to actually think, ‘You know what? You need to get yourself an up-to-date computer with the latest operating system already installed, so it's not fighting with anything else.’

And to know now that I’m always going to be running the latest edition of Word on the latest operating system and that the plugins that fit into that software, like PerfectIt, are going to be the latest editions too ... for me, that’s just one less worry.

It means that I can get on doing the business of editing rather than thinking, ‘I want to be able to do X, Y or Z but I can’t because it’s broken.’

And so I’m really excited about this because, as you say, it’s upfront, it’s clear, everybody knows what they’re gonna pay and what they’re getting.

And you mentioned something there as well, and that was the issue of support. Because in days past, it was the case that if you decided to stick with an older version of PerfectIt you wouldn’t have access to you.

And sometimes, you know when you get stuck on things, you just want to be able to ask the person who actually really knows the answer. It’s not guesswork. And knowing that that’s always going to be ... you get the full package. So I’m really excited about it. I think it’s a really good deal.

I think the price is a steal as well. And for those of us who are members of professional societies, what a perk of membership to know that you can get one of your core pieces of editing software at such a huge discount! Thank you!

DH: Yeah, those societies and the editors within them are absolutely the reason why we are where we are today. That’s been the core of this business so now I absolutely think that it’s important to support them.

PerfectIt and Office 2016DH: And I agree with you completely about thinking about Office and updates that way.

I know that a lot of editors have been disappointed when we’ve said that PerfectIt Cloud is only gonna work in Office 2016. And they said, ‘Well, I’m never moving to Office 2016 because I’ve heard all these terrible things about it.’

And I just wonder every time I hear that ... I think, I know those stories are true – when you have a piece of software like Microsoft that is installed everywhere then you always are going to have some things that don’t work and that are gonna get on Facebook. And they’re gonna look to seek help. And they’re always going to be the ones who have some kind of problem.

You never get someone who installs the latest version of Microsoft and says, ‘Yep, that worked’ and tells all their friends.

So our perception of these versions has been really sort of distorted by, I think, the relatively lower number of people who have had problems in perspective to the total, in relation to total.

And as you say, when you actually look at the package and what Microsoft are offering, I think it’s really good. And I’m fortunate that I’ve never had any sort of problems with it. I’ve used Word on the iPad, I use Word on the PC. I think they’ve done a really good job of making those two similar and in line. In the past, there’s been big differences between those things.

You know, I was able to switch as a long-time PC-user to the iPad version. I had no trouble doing that. And they do it at a low monthly price. And what I’ve sort of been saying to anyone who’s asked about it is something like, yes, there are some users who’ve had problems, and there have doubtless been lots of glitches, and there always are with endless Microsoft updates, but what about trying it for one month? They offer a monthly price. And see if it works for you.

And you’ve got your old version and you can always go back, but those old versions, they’re at this point ... you know, Microsoft has stopped supporting Office 2011 anyway, so we’re out of that period really.

Yeah, I think I think as you say, the package they’re offering is very good, and especially the kind of value in the monthly offer. It makes a lot of sense.

LH: Yeah, and I think the other thing to mention is that, you know, I think sometimes there are people in, well, not just the editing community but all sorts of communities who are trying to run say 2016, or with all the updates, 2018 software but on decade-old computers.

And that’s a bit like taking your mobile phone to medieval times and complaining you haven’t got signal!

You know, we need as editors to be, I think, working with the latest equipment. Within a budget, of course. Most of us aren’t rich. But I always think, get the best RAM you can ... get the best processor you can for your money.

And then things like PerfectIt, within Word, within Microsoft Office, will work the best for you.

DH: Absolutely! And we all make these mistakes! I’ve been screaming at my printer all morning and pressing over and over again, and wasting so much time trying to get this printer to work.

And I know the reason why it doesn’t work – it’s because it’s really old, and would cost next to nothing to replace.

But, you know, we’re old enough to remember that these things used to be very expensive, and it’s so difficult to get rid of them. But, actually, you know, when running a business, to spend my morning yelling at a printer is probably not the best use of my time!

PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both?LH: So can I just check something with you? Can we talk then about the next version of PerfectIt that will be also usable locally?

So we’ve got PerfectIt Cloud but there’ll come a point I’m assuming when there’ll be the next version, like PerfectIt 4 that will be in the cloud. Will that also be something that someone like me who’s got a little bit of an iffy broadband connection can, if they want to, download to their computer?

DH: Oh, so we are NOT moving to the cloud in any way, shape or form. We’re doing very much that kind of approach that Microsoft has gone for where you pay once and you have different parallel versions for different devices.

We are not switching to the cloud. There will always be a local version. As I said earlier, it’s still kind of the best version for a number of reasons.

And so at the moment, if you get a subscription, you will get PerfectIt 3 and PerfectIt Cloud, and as of the end of this year you’ll get PerfectIt 4 and PerfectIt Cloud.

And we’ll keep the two in parallel so that they’re running off ultimately the same code, so that you’ll get the update for PerfectIt 4 locally, and at the same time, almost at the same time, we will update PerfectIt Cloud automatically, and they’ll offer the same checking.

LH: OK, great, that’s good. I just wanted to be sure of that because ... just because my broadband is a bit of a nightmare here!

DH: No, no, I don’t think we communicated that properly in our in our literature so it’s a really good question to ask. I’m sure a lot of people will be concerned about that.

Features of PerfectIt 4LH: So can we talk about ... do you have any specific plans for what will be new with PerfectIt 4 yet, or can we suggest things?

DH: Well, obviously, I’m going to dodge that question because the trouble with that question is that if I start saying we’ve got plans for PerfectIt 4, that we’re working on ... I suspect if I start saying the things that I’m working on, the disappointment that will follow when we say we’ve failed ... [laughing].

But I like the idea of suggestions. As I said, this business has very much been built by support from editors, and feedback from editors.

So if we wind the clock like all the way back to the first time that I was at SfEP conference, I remember someone mentioning en dashes and and why they could be in the hyphenation-consistency check.

And let’s let’s be honest, at that point, which was been ten years ago or so, I didn’t understand the significance of that. Why would we need to be looking for en dashes and hyphenation? What’s the point?

And actually it was that feedback which we then took on. And it got quite a few people explaining and saying, well, actually, this is the error that we’re looking for. This is what comes up. It’s really difficult to spot because of this. Is there anything you can do?

And I think it was in PerfectIt 2 but certainly in PerfectIt 3. And we’ve built in an en dash versus spaced-hyphen consistency check.

LH: And em dashes too.

DH: Yes, the way we do the checking for those is a little different but, yeah, it ultimately came down to the same reason, which is editors suggesting that these were the things that they wanted to see.

And I’d love to get those suggestions for PerfectIt 4. So, particularly ...

LH: I’m thinking legal and medical might be obvious.

DH: Yes, legal. I’ve got a long, long list of changes that we want to make for legal, but medical, pharmaceutical scientific ... I know we have a lot of editors working in those kinds of fields and I feel like we haven’t done as much for them as we should and could.

So I’d love to get suggestions from every kind of editor, but especially those ones would be really good, because we need to do more in that area.

LH: And speaking as a fiction editor as well, I think there are certain functions I’m using ... the possibilities are there but there are certainly things I could think of in terms of the similar-word-find function that maybe even we could put forward some suggestions that might help you to push that stuff further forward, and help us to adapt the style sheets more so that we could get more benefits in that field too.

And I’ll certainly be thinking if there’s anything else from a fiction point of view that I can push your way.

DH: Definitely. You know, we always get a nonfiction writer saying, ‘Can this be used for nonfiction too?’ We get fiction writers saying, ‘Can it be used for fiction?’ And we hadn’t been quite communicated clear enough that, yes, it’s for all of those things.

And, yeah, the similar-words function. Lots of people are using that for character names. Can we improve that? Can we make it clearer that that’s a possibility for character names? Can we look and see if there are ways of improving that?

And already you have got me talking about features that I swore just two seconds ago I wouldn’t get into! Some of those things people are really gonna be telling me, ‘But you promised, but you promised!’

I will avoid saying more about that but I am excited by that kind of change and by doing things that are specific to different kinds of editing, for sure.

LH: I think from my point of view as an editor, and for people who are watching this who haven’t tried PerfectIt yet, knowing that you’re responsive to ways in which you can develop the software is a really important thing to emphasize, because the various iterations that I’ve used over the years have just got better and better. And that means I’ve saved more and more time.

And so I want to say to people that when you invest in this software you are working with a company and a business owner who will listen to you, and that's a good thing.

DH: Thank you! And my guess is that at this point in the video, between the dogs barking outside and the helicopter going overhead, anyone who is completely new to this software will probably have stopped watching 20 minutes ago!

But, yes, anyone with us longer hopefully has experienced that we are ... it’s actually the other way around. It’s editors who’ve helped build this and made all this stuff possible, so we are absolutely listening, and will continue to iterate and improve.

If we improve the product for actual editors, everyone else who uses the software benefits. And, you know, we really have the best people in the world advising us, so I think it’s fantastic.

Sign-offLH: Daniel, thanks very much! That’s been really, really useful. So I’m excited about ... not just the cloud but also PerfectIt 4 coming out. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to use it on multiple platforms, in different spaces. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to get it cheaper than I did last year!

So thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It’s been brilliant.

DH: Thank you! And thank you for all the support through all the years.

The excitement and enthusiasm is so encouraging after we’ve been telling people, you know, soon, soon just another month, just another couple of months. Now that it’s done, now this here, it’s fantastic! Thank you.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Have proofreading symbols passed their use-by date? It’s a controversial question, but one that we definitely need to ponder. So, as an unconventional ‘celebration’ of 30 years in publishing, Melanie Thompson is setting out to answer this question – and she needs your help ...

Over to Melanie ...

​A few months ago a colleague asked me whether (UK-based) clients want proofreaders to use British Standard proofreading symbols or whether they prefer mark-up using Acrobat tools on PDFs.

‘Good question,’ I replied. ‘I hope to be able to answer that later this year.’ That probably wasn’t the answer they were expecting.The widely different expectations of clients who ask for ‘proofreading’ has been niggling at the back of my mind for a couple of years.

What's changed in three decadesI have been a practising proofreader for 30 years, I’ve managed teams of editors and proofreaders, and I’ve been a tutor for newcomers to our industry. Yet I still learn something every time I proofread for a new client.It’s several years since I was last asked to use BS symbols for a ‘live’ project,* but I use them a lot on rough draft print-outs – because they’re so concise and … well, let’s face it, to some extent those symbols are like a secret language that only we ‘professionals’ know. I like to keep my hand in.But proofreading is now a global business activity, and ‘proofreading symbols’ differ around the world – which kind of defeats their original objective.

And now so many of us work on Word files or PDFs (or slides, or banner ads, or websites or … ) and there are other ways of doing things.This all makes daily work for a freelance proofreader a bit more complicated (or interesting (if challenges float your boat). We might be working for a local business one day and an author in the opposite hemisphere the next.

It’s rare, but not unheard of, to receive huge packets of page proofs through the mail and to have to rattle around in the desk drawer to find your long-lost favourite red pen. Usually, however, things tend to arrive by email or through an ftp site or a shared Dropbox folder.

Digital workflows

MELANIE THOMPSON: DEALING WITH DIGITAL WORKFLOWS FROM A STANDING DESK!

The ‘digital workflow’ is something we’re now all part of, whether we realize it or not. But clients are at different stages in their adoption (or not) of the latest tools and techniques, and that leaves us proofreaders in an interesting position.

We need to be able to adapt our working practices to suit different clients; ideally, seamlessly. For that, we need to understand what the current processes are, and what clients are planning for the future.

And that’s where I need your help.

​A new research project: proofreading2020I’ve launched a research project, proofreading2020, to investigate proofreading now and where it might be heading.

The study begins with a survey, asking detailed questions about proofreading habits and preferences. Once the results are in, I’ll be conducting follow-up research for case studies and, early in 2019, publishing the results in book form.​You can find out more and complete the survey atproofreading2020. It's open now, and closes on 30 June 2018.Almost 200 proofreaders, project managers and publishers have already completed the survey. Several have contacted me to say it was really useful CPD, because it made them think about how they work and why they do things. So I hope you’ll be willing to set aside a tea-break to fill it in.It takes about 20 minutes to complete, but it’s easy to skip questions that aren’t relevant to you.

​There are only a handful of questions (at the beginning and end) that are compulsory (just the usual demographics and privacy permissions). Beyond that, the sections cover the following:
​

Proofreader training and qualifications

Taking/making bookings and negotiating fees

The materials people proofread (end products and the formats they’re created in)

Marking up techniques (on paper, on screen, software tools etc.)

Collating proofs and dealing with queries

A bit of fun (yes, really!) and sci-fi proofreading

Your chance to join in!

Find out more and complete the survey at proofreading2020.
Don't forget, the closing date is 30 June 2018.

​* If a client does ask for BS symbols, I recommend downloading Louise’s free stamps for use on PDFs – they will save you a lot of time and help you deliver a neat and clear proof.

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Here's a treat for PerfectIt users ... a custom style sheet that includes the find-and-replace strings in my free ebook, The Author's Proofreading Companion.

If the Companion has made your life easier, you'll love what my colleague Andrea Kay ofYours Truleigh Editing has done. Yep, she's upped the efficiency game for all of us by creating a custom style sheet that can be imported into PerfectIt.

Thank you so much, Andrea!

For those unfamiliar with either the software or the booklet, I've provided an overview of both, and the benefits of importing the style sheet.

Andrea's also created a style sheet for the Student Proofreading Toolkit. Double thanks!

Below that are the installation instructions and the ready-to-download files for the Companion and the Toolkit.

What's PerfectIt?For those readers who are not familiar with this software, PerfectIt is a sophisticated consistency checker that works with Microsoft Word. By customizing its built-in style sheets, or creating your own, you can define your preferences and let PerfectIt locate variations and possible errors.

In addition to showing you how to use some simple macros, it includes search strings to help you locate and fix potential problems, including​ rogue spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs, double line returns, tabbed paragraph indents, lower-case letters at the beginning of paragraphs, paragraphs that end with no punctuation, and more.

What's the style sheet?
Andrea Kay just saved PerfectIt users a ton of time by building an importable custom style sheet that features the key search strings from the ebook!

That means you don't have to manually type the strings into your Word document one by one, then repeat the process each time you work on a new document.

Instead, import the style sheet, run PerfectIt, and let the software locate the potential problems for you. All you have to do is decide whether to implement the suggested change in your document.

​How to import your style sheet
Importing the style sheet is a doddle, I promise, Follow the instructions and screenshots below. If PerfectIt is already installed, the process will take no longer than 20 seconds.

1. Unfortunately, I can't upload the files to Weebly, so I'm using my bot Lulu and delivering via Messenger.

​Click on the green button below. That will take you to a post on my Facebook page. There you can comment with the word 'perfect' and Lulu will send you the files. Click on each one to download to your device.

9. To run PerfectIt on your current Word document using the custom style sheet, press Start.

If you're not a PerfectIt user ...
If you're not yet ready to invest in PerfectIt but still want access to the find-and-replace strings and other tools in the ebooks, click on the images below. They'll take you to the download pages.

​They're free and you won't have to hand over any personal data to access it. Enjoy!

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​If you’re an editor, making Word work hard for you is a must. The new and revised edition of Editing in Word 2016 is one of my recommended resources. Here's why.

I’m a fiction editor who works solely for indie authors and self-publishers. I work on raw-text files, and Microsoft Word is one piece of software that I cannot afford to be without.

Word has its snafus but I don’t know of any word-processing software that comes close to offering its superb functionality. I don’t just edit in Word; I’ve also created print- and digital-ready books directly in it.

So when fellow editor and author Adrienne Montgomerie asked me to review the second edition of Editing in Word 2016, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I’ve been using Word since 1991, so could Montgomerie teach this old dog a few new tricks? How about younger pups?
​
Let’s see ...

More than an ebook
This is a digital self-study course. Yes, you get the ebook with all the contextual information and foundational teaching. But there are also videos that show Word in action, and a bunch of exercises with which to practise what you learn at each stage of the process.

I love the fact that the advice is actionable. You read, you see, you learn, and then you do. There’s no better way to ensure it’s all sunk in.

A focus on core tools

‘We need a resource that gets right to the tools editors can’t live without; the tools that make our job easier and faster. We need to know about the tools that are the very reason we use Word at all.’

PREFACE, Editing in Word 2016

We certainly do. Here are some of the tools that Montgomerie focuses on:

Track Changes

Comments

Spellchecking

Formatting

Find and replace

Styles

Readability stats

The equation editor

Macros – creating, editing, running and using

Recommended add-ins, plug-ins and apps

If you don’t know 8 out of 10 of the above tools inside out, you’re likely not as efficient or productive as you could be. That alone makes this course a worthy purchase.

That it’s a steal at just under 25 quid (excluding VAT) makes it a no-brainer.

​Let’s dig a little deeper ...

Screens, operating systems and how we work with Word
One of the best things about this course is its acknowledgement that editors work in different ways.

I like Windows; you like a Mac. No problem.

I like a ribbon/mouse combo; you like keyboard shortcuts; and he likes Mac menus. All those preferences are incorporated into the instructions.

Top tips
This course is rammed with useful and actionable tips on how to get stuff done and in ways that respect your preferences. For example:

Pre-editing file preparation

Different ways to do things: for example, running a macro or using keyboard-shortcuts instead

Customizing your onscreen work space

Incorporating additional plug-ins and apps into Word that will make editing even more efficient

And along the way, Montgomerie includes ‘Pro tips’, ‘Read more’ and ‘Troubleshooting’ callouts to keep you on track.

Video demos
I’m a big fan of multimedia learning. And when it comes to editing, sometimes just hearing your tutor’s voice and watching them go through the motions onscreen can trump the written word.

In addition to the ebook, there's a support website with 27 video tutorials for both Mac and Windows users.

This feature is excellent. I’ve come across a lot of editors who’d like to enhance their digital skills but are held back through fear. Montgomerie takes the stress away via accessible walkthroughs that even the most tech-nervous of nellies will be able to follow.

Here are just 3 examples:

How to record a macro

Installing an existing third-party macro

Setting up autocorrect preferences

Practice makes perfect
There are 24 exercises in this course that help you to hone your skills and start doing what’s written in the book and shown in the videos.

Just a few examples include:

Using autocorrect

Locking Track Changes

Language selection

Comparing documents

Customizing Word’s ribbon

A note on versions
This course was created in 2017 using Word 365 on Windows 10 and Sierra OS. Given that the author’s using the latest software and operating systems, you might find that the instructions need a little tweaking here and there if you’re using medieval Word (or should that be Wordeth?)!

For example, older versions of Word might have different ribbon displays, icons and menu options.

That’s unavoidable, and a reminder that, as professionals, we should be aspiring to use up-to-date equipment. I’d prefer my dentist not to fill my teeth with 10-year-old composites; we should treat our clients similarly.

My verdict
Did I learn anything new? Yes, I did. But editorial training isn’t just about finding out what you don’t know; it’s also great for affirmation of what you do know. I was pleased to learn from a pro that a lot of my Word usage is on track.

Here’s another thing, though: there are functions in Word that I use infrequently (e.g. erasing time stamps). I know it’s possible but I’ve simply forgotten how.

​And instead of trawling Google or spending valuable time asking questions in editing forums, I can have Editing in Word open on my desktop. From there, I can search, locate and solve my problem in seconds.

I recommend this without reservation for any editor who wants to get the very best from Word with a one-stop shop, especially those who've been held back by fear. Montgomerie will take that away from you – I promise.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Here's the fourth part of my audio-book creation series. In this article, professional voice artist Ray Greenley discusses distribution options, the importance of having your manuscript edited prior to narration, and briefing your voice artist or producer. Here's Ray ...

Distribution decisionsSo you’ve listened to your auditions, you’ve researched your potential producer and think they’re the one for your book, and you’ve come to an agreement on payment terms.

There are a few other bits you’ll need to work out before you can offer the producer a contract.

One is whether you want todistribute exclusivelythrough Audible, Amazon, and iTunes for a higher share of the royalties from sales (royalties are 40% of sale price), ornon-exclusively, which means you can set up distribution yourself through other platforms, but you’ll get a smaller share of royalties from sales through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes (royalties are 25% of sale price).

Note that if you want to do a Royalty Share or Hybrid contract on ACX, you MUST do exclusive distribution.
​There’s some other information you’ll need to work out with the producer:

The date for theFirst-15-Minutes evaluation(more about this later)

The date forproject completion

Different producers work at different paces; and many will have other books already waiting to be recorded. They might be able to start on your book right away and have it done in a week or two, or they might be scheduling out months in advance.

Talk to your producer and let them know if you have any schedule in mind, butbe ready to be flexible.

​Once you have those dates, you can offer the contract, and when it’s accepted you’re almost ready to go! There’s just one more thing you need to do, and that’sprovide the producer with your final, ready-to-record manuscript.

Editing your manuscriptNow, I promise this isn’t just me sucking up to my gracious host, but please, for the love of all that’s good and holy,make sure your manuscript is edited and proofed by someone who knows what they’re doing.

It makes the project many times more difficult when we have to struggle through bad grammar, missing punctuation, and poor formatting. In some cases (as happened with me early on), we can’t do it and the contract has to be canceled.

If you find a producer who you like working with and does good work for you, then you’ll want to build that relationship into something ongoing. Handing them a manuscript that they can barely get through isn’t going to help.

And while those grammar errors may seem innocuous enough on the page to your eyes, they’re VERY hard to hide in audio.

Now, we producers know enough to not expect perfection. We can handle a reasonable number of errors in a manuscript. But in the end, it’s best for you, for us, and for your readers to get your manuscript properly edited, so please do it before sending the manuscript to us.

Briefing your producer
​From here on out, it sort of depends on you and the producer.

One thing that’s often very handy for a producer is to get some additional information about the characters in the story, including:

Your preference for vocal qualities or accents

How important the character is

Whether the character will be in future books (and especially if the character becomes more important in future books)

Also, if your book has words that your producer might have a hard time finding pronunciations for (particularly with made-up names in science fiction or fantasy books),having a key is really helpful.
It’s really important to get this sort of information as early as possible while the producer is preparing to narrate the book, but before they’ve actually hit ‘record’.
​None of that stuff is vital; if you picked your producer well, they’ll be ready to handle all of that on their own. But having some guidance can definitely help.

In the final article, we'll look at evaluating the first 15 minutes and production approval. Until then ...

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

If you think there's no place for macros in fiction editing, think again. My friend Paul Beverley has collated a core group of macros that will have any fiction line editor, copyeditor or proofreader drooling! Self-publishing authors will love them too!

I don't use all of these (every editor has their preferences) but some of them are staples and save me oodles of time!

Some of the macros apply when you’re looking at the whole text of a novel, while others are selective ... for use while you’re editing line by line. Bear in mind that they're designed to be used with MS Word files.

Macros that work with the whole textThese macros are ideal near the beginning of the edit, when you’ve put together the whole book in one single file, and you want to look for inconsistencies.

ProperNounAlyse searches the novel for any words that look like proper nouns; it counts their frequency, and then tries to locate, by using a variety of tests, and pairs of names that might possibly be alternative spellings or misspellings, e.g. Jayne/Jane, Beverley/Beverly, Neiman/Nieman, Grosman/Grosmann etc.

FullNameAlyse is similar to ProperNounAlyse, but it searches for multi-part names, Fred Smith, Burt Fry, etc.

ChronologyChecker is aimed at tracing the chronology of a novel. It extracts, into a separate file, all the paragraphs containing appropriate chronology-type words: Monday, Wednesday, Fri, Sat, April, June, 1958, 2017, etc. This file is then more easily searchable to look at the significance of the text for the chronology.

WordsPhrasesInContext tracks the occurrence of specific names through a novel. You give it a list of names/words/phrases, and it searches for any paragraphs in the novel that contain them. It creates a separate file of those paragraphs, with the searched element highlighted in your choice of colour.

CatchPhrase searches your novel for over-used phrases and counts how many times each phrase occurs.
​

Macros for when editing line by lineFullPoint/Comma/Semicolon/Colon/Dash/QuestionMark/ExclamationMarkThese macros changehe said, you know ...into he said. You know ... ​or he said: you know ...​or he said – you know ...and so on.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Here's how to convert a Word document into EPUB or MOBI file format. This option certainly won't be for everyone, but if it suits you, you can master it in seconds ... and for free.

Many authors create their books directly in Microsoft Word because of its excellent suite of onboard styling tools and its compatibility with a range of plug-ins and add-ins (including macros). Pro editors love it for the same reasons.

​Once the writing, drafting, editing, and final revisions are complete, it’s time to publish. Is a Word file good enough for epublication? How about a DIY conversion to EPUB or MOBI? It depends on several factors:

Your freebie plans

Your budget

Your sales and distribution platform

The complexity of your interior design

Editorial assessment and freebies
Perhaps you want to send a review copy to a reader who has a Kindle. Or maybe you want to offer free ebooks for family members and friends. The devices your readers own will determine the required file format. Having your own EPUBs and MOBIs will give you flexibility beyond Word and PDF.

And if you're sending your book file for editorial assessment, your developmental editor might prefer to upload your book to their e-reader. They'll makes notes in the file in preparation for their final report or critique.

Doing the conversion yourself gives you the freedom to distribute your book without having to jump through the distributors’ hoops.

Your budgetHow about if you’re making your book available for sale? Should you hire a pro formatter for your ebook interior? Yes, definitely, if you have the budget for it, because a pro formatter will do a pro job. The same applies to commissioning various rounds of professional editing.

But let’s be honest – not every indie author has deep pockets, and some of you will have to make choices about where to invest your budget. It might be that a DIY conversion will suffice, and in that case Calibre could be your friend.

What is Calibre?Calibre is free open-source ebook-management software. With it you can convert a Word file to an EPUB or a MOBI.

​"We recommend the Microsoft Word path as the best option for most fiction and narrative non-fiction authors because it’s the easiest method to produce high-quality ebooks that are readable on any e-reading device. It will also generate your ebook in multiple ebook formats at the Smashwords store, making your book readable on any e-reading device. By using Microsoft Word, it’s also easy to modify your book at any time."

​Make sure you follow the Smashwords guidelines on preparing your Word file, otherwise your published book will be a mess! Furthermore, you’ll risk not qualifying for inclusion in Smashwords’ premium catalogue, which gets your book in front of some big online retailers including:

Apple iBooks store

Baker & Taylor

Barnes & Noble

Flipkart

Kobo

OverDrive

Oyster

Scribd

If your interior is complex, Smashwords will accept EPUB files but they should be professionally designed. There’s further guidance in the Smashwords Style Guide.

Kindle Direct Publishing/Amazon
If you’re self-publishing via KDP, Amazon will create a MOBI for you from your word file. The same principles apply: as long as you follow the formatting instructions to the tee, and your book interior is straightforward, Word will suffice. Here’s where to access KDP’s Simplified eBook Formatting Guide.

If your interior is more sophisticated, I’d advise you to hire a pro. Neither a Word file nor the DIY Calibre conversion offered in this article will do the job to a high enough standard.

Direct sales
If you’re selling direct from your own author platform, you can offer a PDF. But that’s not what every customer wants. PDFs look fabulous on tablets but awful on e-readers. If your customer wants something different, and you want to maximize sales opportunities, you’ll need another option. Calibre could be the solution.

The complexity of your interior design
​​If you have a primarily text-based Word file that will tolerate a simple heading structure for titles, part titles and chapters – as is often the case for fiction and narrative non-fiction – this quick-conversion method could work well for you.

If your interior design is more complex, I strongly recommend you commission a professional formatter (some editors also have formatting skills) to do the job on your behalf.

In my test, which involved a non-fiction Word file with multiple heading levels, a contents list, boxes, images and other design features, the conversion results for EPUB and MOBI were far from perfect, though I did find solutions when I was prepared to compromise.

Here’s how I messed up ... so you don’t have to.

Poor cover design: The image appeared squashed because I’d just grabbed what was to hand instead of checking the recommended size guidelines.

Solution: Ensure your cover image is 600 x 800 px.

Contents list: I left in the contents list created using Word's Table of Contents tool. It was disjointed and interrupted with coding tags.

Solution: Remove it if you want to use the quick-conversion process outlined below. If you want to retain a contents list, you’ll need to bring in a pro formatter.

Designed elements: My boxed text and other designed features looked horrible. All the formatting disappeared and the elements were poorly aligned.

Solution: Turn these features into plain text, and style them using bold, italic and the indentation tool on the Word ribbon.

Heading levels: My file had multiple heading styles, all of which looked beautiful in Word and on PDF. By the time I’d finished my speedy Calibre conversion, only one heading level remained. The rest appeared as plain text.

Solution: Change all the headings to a single style and differentiate the levels using all-caps and centring.

The main text, level-one headings and images: These converted beautifully.​

Solution: None needed!

​If you still think your Word document fits the bill, here's how to create your EPUB or MOBI file.

How to do the quick conversionOpen your Word document and save it as an rtf (Rich Text Format) using the Save As function (select Rich Text Format from the drop-down menu). Close the file and head over to Calibre.

Click on the Add books icon and select your rtf. ​

The file will upload to Calibre. Make sure your book file is highlighted, then click on the Convert books icon.

Now you can select and edit the metadata:

The type of file you wish to create – I’ve chosen EPUB in this example (yellow box)

The bibliographic details (green box)

And your cover image (red box). Use the scroll bar (blue arrow) to scroll down and change the image file

Click OK. In the bottom-right-hand corner you’ll see the Jobs icon whirring.

When the conversion is complete, click on the new file format to check that all is well.

This will open the E-book viewer, and it’s one of Calibre’s top features because you can see at a glance what your reader will be looking at.

Summing up
If you have a straightforward interior that’s text-based, this quickie Calibre conversion is absolutely worth experimenting with. And it’s free, so even if things don’t go to plan you won’t have lost any money – you’ll just have learned the basics of a new tool that you might be able to take advantage of another time.

​Poor formatting will earn you nothing but frustrated customers and bad reviews, so:

Check the output on your own device before you offer it to the world!

After you've uploaded your ebook to a third-party platform, check it again!

​
If your interior is complex, don't even think about using the method outlined here. Work with a pro. Professional eformatting isn’t a service I offer but I’m more than happy to put you in touch with colleagues who can help.

Drop me a line via my contact page or comment here on the blog.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Proofreading for publishers is something every professionally trained new entrant to the field should consider. Many of my experienced colleagues work exclusively for publishers. I used to and don't regret it for a minute.

And it can be profitable, despite what you might have heard.

Just a few of the benefits of publisher work include:

Regular commissions

Varied and interesting projects

Big-name authors that'll make your portfolio stand out

Testimonials that really count

Industry experience

Clearly defined service parameters

Some proofreaders are finding that publisher work is not as profitable as it once was. Perhaps the fees haven't increased in real terms, or the proofreader is being expected to check more words per paid page. Being efficient has become key to sustaining these valuable client relationships.

The PDF below includes some tips and tricks on how to make proofreading for publishers (and packagers) profitable by spicing up your digital efficiency. The advice is based on my experience of working for academic publishers for over a decade.

​Click on the image to download your free copy. I hope you find it useful.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Anna is training to be a proofreader and plans to set up her own business in the near future. She’s ready to upgrade her kit but wants to make sure her investment is fit for purpose.

Says Anna:

At the moment I am working on an old-ish MacBook Pro but know I need to upgrade very soon. The dilemma is whether to buy an improved laptop or move to a desktop. My preference is for Apple products as I know my way around them better.

​I’m tempted to get a better laptop. I like the freedom of being able to move around and I often travel. But I know that a desktop would give me a significantly bigger screen.
​What are your thoughts on screen size for proofreading? How important is it to have a large screen, or is it easier to use two screens side by side at times? And if you use a laptop how small a screen would you consider too small?

Hi, Anna!

Great question. In short, I think you should go for what suits your lifestyle best. But let's look at some options.

The greedy optionThis is my choice! In my shed, I have a desktop with two large screens. In my house I have a backup 14” notebook.

Some of my editing colleagues have three or four large screens rigged up to their desktops. That’s great if your machine can handle it (some can’t) and if you have the space (some don’t).

If I’m honest, until recently I considered it unthinkable to work five hours a day on my HP Pavilion notebook. My desktop and double screenage setup was a necessity! I suspect there's evidence of that thinking somewhere here on the blog!
​
But that’s hogwash.

In November, a family member became poorly and I had to relocate from my office (at the bottom of my garden) to the dining table in my house.

We’re now past the middle of January and I’m still there, though I’ll be heading back to the shed in a week.

But you know what? It’s been fine ... more than fine. Yes, I've had to toggle a lot more but that’s such a first-world problem!

And I do have a second screen! My pal and fellow editor Kat Trail told me about an app called Duet that allows me to hook up my Windows notebook to an an iPad ... MS to iOS. Who'd have thought?

And she showed off her new lap-desk.

Like a sheep, I bought the whole caboodle! It works like a dream. Thanks, Kat!

The light option
You say you like to travel. Meet Kate Haigh, another editor friend of mine. She’s location independent. She works with a laptop and nothing else. It gives her the flexibility and mobility she needs to travel the world. She’s in Guatemala City as I write!

Once upon a time, she had multiple large monitors, but she adapted. Given your itchy feet, you might like to read her posts about location-independent editing and proofreading (see the Taking Your Proofreading Service on the Road series via For Editors and Proofreaders section on the Kateproof blog). There are lots of tips and tools on offer for editors who want to lighten the load.

One of Kate’s favourite pieces of equipment is the lightweight, foldable Roost laptop stand

If you decide to commit to a new laptop but want an additional largish monitor, hook up your existing MacBook Pro or splash out on an additional monitor especially for home use.

What’s too small?
I’d recommend a screen that's at least big enough to house the full width of one page at a viewing scale that’s readable, with some room in the margins to spare.

That way you can call up a navigation pane in the sidebar without having to scroll across the page. Additional navigation panes could include the Find pane in Word or the Bookmarks pane in a PDF reader.

I can achieve this comfortably with my 14” notebook screen.

Beyond the screen: RAM and processor
I think that screen size is less important than RAM and a decent processor.

The more programs we’re running, the bigger the demands on our kit.

When we’re professionally editing and proofreading, we’ll likely have multiple files open simultaneously. We’ll be running Word and/or PDF readers. We’ll be using additional software (macros, for example) to complement our beady eyes. And there are online tools and resources (e.g. email, dictionary and style manual) that we’ll need to access.

Regardless of whether seeing all that stuff requires a quick keyboard toggle or is viewable on multiple screens, it’s greedy.

Focus on performance first and screen size second. Smaller screens can be adapted to. Poor processor performance and memory can’t – they're just a frustration and will slow you down.

Back to my notebook: the screen is only 14" but it has an Intel Core i5 7th gen processor (not the highest spec but good enough), 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, all of which means the machine can fire on all cylinders while I'm putting it through its paces.

In a nutshell
You don’t need one large screen to do a pro job. You certainly don’t need three. You might well find them rather marvellous if you have room and are not looking to go anywhere anytime soon.

​But if they’re going to clutter up your living space and remain unused much of the time because you’re on the road, they’re a waste of your money.

Invest in the equipment you feel comfortable with and that works hard for you, and you’ll not go far wrong.

Good luck with your training!

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​In this series, I’ll show you several ways to use a chatbot to engage with your readers, expand your fan base and put a smile on people’s faces! Today, the focus is on building a bot campaign to market a book on Facebook.

Bots are still a massively underused tool so incorporating them into your book-promotion strategy now will help you to stand out.

This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #86

What’s a chatbot?
In short, a chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation. I built my own chatbot in August.

Yes, it's a computer program but it's helping me digitally with my business so I wanted it to have a face and a name that I could work into my chatbot marketing campaigns.

I called it Lulu and asked my friend, illustrator Rachel Holmes, to create the design. I think she did a great job of putting the art into artificial intelligence ... this is what Lulu looks like! Cute, isn’t she?

Here are a few things you should know about the chatbot tools I’ll show you:

Building your bot
My preferred bot-building platform is ManyChat. It’s straightforward to navigate and I appreciate being able to run four simultaneous live campaigns free of charge.

There are restrictions with the free version – for example, you can’t automatically transfer subscribers to your mailing list – but you can still do a huge amount without spending a bean.

In this article I’m focusing on how to use the Facebook comments growth tool for book marketing. To follow my lead you'll need to have set up your own ManyChat account and linked it to your Facebook Page.

Here’s an image of the fake book I've knocked up for demonstration purposes. In my sample promotion campaign, I’m offering fans the opportunity to enter a free draw. The winner will have their name assigned to a key supporting character.

​Let's see how we can use a chatbot and a Facebook Page to deliver this campaign and achieve the goals outlined above.
​The strategy
Here's how it works. Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook – the longer people stick around, the more likely they are to click on paid ads. And if advertisers generate leads with their ads, they’re likely to buy more. That means more money for Facebook.

Facebook also wants to provide a good user experience because that will encourage more people use the platform.

Users who are having a good time will feel informed, engaged, entertained and helped. Facebook's algorithm identifies content that ticks those boxes and prioritizes it. Key indicators are likes, shares, comments and time spent engaging with a post (e.g. when watching a video).

The more engagement you create on a Page post, the more Facebook will reward you for your neighbourly behaviour by pushing your content beyond your existing community (friends, followers and likers).

Comments are the powerhouse behind this campaign tool.

A great way to generate a comment is to offer something in return. I've given away free ebooklets and checklists that help writers with self-editing, and fellow editors and proofreaders with professional development.

If you promote your book on Facebook by posting a nice piccy and a link to your website where there’s, say, a free sample chapter, you’re pushing people off Facebook. But if you offer that same sample right there on Facebook, you’re keeping your visitors on Facebook’s land. And so you’ll be rewarded with increased audience reach.

ManyChat’s Facebook comments growth tool allows you to do exactly this: a trigger word in the comments tells your bot to deliver your freebie to the commenter via Facebook Messenger. Your fan doesn't have to leave the platform to get the goodies.

The offer – ideas for you to steal
Your offer must be strong enough to compel someone to comment. Here are some ideas for you to try:

entry into a free draw for the commenter’s name to be assigned to a character in the book (this is the offer I've chosen for the sample campaign in this article)

free ebook (a short story, novella or other book you’ve published)

sample chapter

discount voucher/code

invitation to a book signing/reading

The build
There are two core elements to the build – the onboard ManyChat tool and the Facebook post.

1. ManyChat
I recommend starting with ManyChat. Here's how to create a campaign:

Give you campaign a name. Scroll down the page and enter the trigger word you'll be instructing your commenters to writer on your Facebook post (it’s not case sensitive).

Save and click on Next.

Now you're in the Auto-response pane. This is where you create the first message that your commenter will receive in Messenger. It’s effectively where they subscribe so it’s important to tell them how they can opt out if they so wish. For the purposes of this campaign, the list of names that the bot collects will be those who are entered into the draw.

The image below shows the message I created for my mock campaign. To prevent spamming, ManyChat requires that the person carries out another action to opt in. I ask them to type SEND.

Use the person icon in the black box in the bottom-right-hand corner to personalize the greeting in your message.

Save, scroll down and select Next again.

Now you're in the Opt-in Actions pane. This is where you can start to be creative. When creating your message, think about your goals; then add buttons, links, and supporting images to help your customer get what you're offering.

First, ensure that the middle button is checked in the Sending Options list.

Then click Edit.

Now you can create another personalized message and add images, videos, audio, files and buttons. So, if, for example, you were giving away a free sample chapter or ebook, you'd click on the File (paperclip) icon and upload your PDF.

​​For demonstration purposes I've kept things simple: an image and a message that tells people when the draw will take place.

I've also elected to create two buttons: one to allow the commenter to have a real conversation with me on Messenger, and one linking to my book's Amazon pre-order sales page.

To create the direct conversation button, click on New Button #1.

Customize the button text.

Now use the scrollbar to move down the page. Select Action.

Select Open Conversation from the menu, and click on Done.

To create a button with a link to your website (or, as I’ve done here, to the book’s pre-order page on Amazon) click on +Add Button.

Amend your button text and click on Open website.

Add the URL and click on Done.

Now testyoursetup using the Preview button. You’ll receive a message in Messenger that mimics what your visitor will receive.

If everything’s working properly, select Publish.

2. Facebook Page
Now go to your Facebook Page. Create a new post that tells your audience about your promotion and the trigger word they need to write in the comments to get the offer. Including a picture or native video is also a great way to draw attention to your post.

Here's a mock-up design of my sample campaign.

Publish your post.

Nowhead back to ManyChat. Select Growth Tools and click on your campaign.

Now you need to link the two elements of the build.

Click the blue Select A Post button

A window will appear with the Facebook posts available for linking to. If your campaign post is the most recent content on your Page, it'll appear at the top, but scroll down if necessary.

Select your post; it’ll link to the chatbot build.

Click the checkbox followed by the blue Save button.

Now shift the button from Draft to Active.

A green button will appear saying Widget Activated. And that’s it – your campaign is live!

Goal achievement
The mock-up I’ve created here is just the tip of the iceberg. You can be far more adventurous if you wish – it all depends on where you want to direct your visitors, the kind of conversation you want to have, and how many levels you add to the messaging sequence. Here are two more ideas:

Create a button that enables people to sign up to your author newsletter or mailing list (using the same steps that I illustrated for the Amazon link). That way you can build your audience on your own land as well as Facebook’s while still using the free version of ManyChat.

Add a short video thanking your commenters for engaging with you.

Here are some additional tactics to consider:

To build your network, friend the Facebook commenters and ask them to like your Page.

Say thank-you to each Facebook post commenter – it shows you’re engaged with your campaign and the people who’ve shown interest.

Use Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and your writer Facebook groups to tell your followers about the fun that’s going on over at your Page.

When you receive email notifications from Messenger that someone’s responded to your campaign, click through to your Facebook Messenger inbox. Sometimes the bot will glitch. Don’t worry – it’s an opportunity to have a direct conversation. You’ve made people smile and they’ll forgive a technical problem if you acknowledge it. I’ve created a gif that I send manually when there’s a fault!

In future articles in this series, I’ll walk you through how to use a chatbot to build your mailing list, help people navigate their way around your website, and take action on a landing page. I’ll also delve deeper into how you might use these tools creatively to build your fanbase and get people talking about your books.

Until then, it’s goodbye from me and Lulu!

P.S. From 1–24 December, Lulu and I will be having a little festive fun on my own Facebook Page. Do drop in to see what’s going on!

Macro Chat is back! This is where I hand over the Parlour reins to my friend, macro king Paul Beverley. A lot has happened since March: Paul's written lots more macros (close on 600 now) and has created another couple of dozen screencasts, 45 in all (see the Resources at the bottom of the blog for more on that). So over to Paul ...

​What can macros do for you?
More and more people are taking a deep breath and loading their first macro tool. (I say ‘macro tool’ to differentiate my pre-programmed macros from those that you can record for yourself.)

But why bother? What can macros do for you?

'I’m a proofreader – is there any point?'
Most definitely! The better view you can get of the (in)consistency within your document before you start reading, the more problems you’ll be able to spot as you read through.

Did the client pass on the editor’s style sheet? Maybe, but anyway, you can easily analyse your document to find the predominant conventions and get a count of the exceptions:

HyphenAlyse gives you a full list (and frequency) of hyphenated words as one word/two words/hyphenated.

ProperNounAlyse alerts you to possible misspellings such as Brown/Browne, Rachael/Rachel, Henry/Herny, giving the frequency of each – especially useful for fiction.

DocAlyse checks a whole range of different punctuation, spelling and capitalisation issues.

SpellingErrorHighlighter,after you’ve removed the OK words from the list, highlights the remaining words, so you can check them.

'I’m an editor, but do I need 600 macros?'
Absolutely not! Indeed, that’s part of the problem, knowing where to start. (Sorry!) But if I suggest a possible general strategy, maybe that will help.

Analyse the text, just as a proofreader would, but there’ll be lots more inconsistency in the text at this earlier stage.

Use these analyses, plus the brief (I wish!), plus your knowledge of the principles of editing, to prepare a style sheet. (For a sample style sheet, see Appendix 5 of my book.)

Read the text and make the changes, in line with the style sheet. (Being realistic, some items in the sheet will need adjusting as you get into the detail of the actual text.)

Fine! Except that (3) is a massive over-simplification. Let’s dig a bit deeper, and see how a macro-aided editor might work.

FRedit – the powerhouse
The principle I use (for books, anyway) is that I make as many changes as I can globally, but I do it chapter by chapter. I do a number of global find and replaces (F&Rs) on chapter 1, but I keep a list of them, so that I can do the same ones again on chapter 2 as well, and I don’t forget any of them.

But hang on! Couldn’t you get the computer to go through that list and do all those F&Rs for you? Absolutely, and that’s what FRedit does! And it doesn’t just do the F&Rs, it allows you to add a font colour or a highlight to each and every F&R, and/or to track change (or not) each one – do you really want to track change all those two-space-to-one-space changes?

But isn’t global F&R dangerous, especially when you can do a whole string of F&Rs at the touch of a button? Definitely, so start with just a few F&Rs and build up confidence; but if you colour or track all the changes, you’ll be able to see, when you read chapter 1, any inadvised F&Rs, so you can remove them or refine them.

To give an example, if you changed every ‘etc’ into ‘etc.’ you’d get ‘ketc.hup’, ‘fetc.h’, etc.. (sic)! So use a wildcard F&R: Find: ‘<etc>([!.])’ Repl: ‘etc.\1’ (without those quotes, of course). And you don’t even need to work out those wildcard F&Rs yourself – just look in the library of F&Rs (provided free with FRedit) and gain from other people’s wildcard expertise.

As you refine your F&R list, chapter by chapter, more of the dross is sorted out before you read, so (a) you miss fewer mistakes (as there are fewer to find, as you read) and (b) you can concentrate more on the meaning and flow of each sentence and (c) the job is more interesting, involving fewer boring tasks.

Can you proofread and copyedit professionally without being mouse-dependent? And what if you don't have a degree? Does it matter? A reader asked me. Here's my take.

Andrew says:

I am considering taking introductory courses in proofreading and copyediting; firstly, please could I ask you about the software used. Usually I prefer to use the keyboard to move around the menus, because I find repeatedly using a mouse tiring on my hands and arms. Does (at least some of) the software used in your industry allow keyboard use as an alternative to mouse work?

Secondly, would my lack of a degree hold me back? I have many years' experience in IT system development and programming; would this experience be attractive to publishers? However, I was hoping to not just to work on IT-related material!

Thanks for your question, Andrew.

Let’s deal with the software issue first.

SoftwareText editing
When editing raw text, most editors use Microsoft Word. There are several excellent complementary add-on programs. These increase the editor’s productivity because they allow us to do complex tasks more quickly.

One example is PerfectIt, an outstanding consistency checker that can be customized to find and fix problems including hyphenation, capitalization, spelling variance, number style, italics, super/subscript, bullet punctuation, and wildcard searches.

In addition, there are hundreds of free macros available to editors, all of which are designed to complement the editor’s eye. Examples include spell-checkers, proper-noun analysis tools, homonym and homophone identifiers,

Then there are onboardtools in Word such as wildcard search and find/replace to name but two. And let’s not forget Word’s ribbon, which provides quick access to a range of tools, including the Styles palette.

To work efficiently, you’ll need to access these tools. As long as you know (or can learn) how to access the relevant menus via your keyboard, and assign keyboard shortcuts, I see no reason why you should be dependent on a mouse.

Page-proof annotation
If you’re hired to proofread designed page proofs, you’ll likely be working on PDF in Acrobat Pro, PDF-XChange, Adobe Reader or similar.

You’ll need to be able to use the onboard comment-and-markup tools and possibly the stamps palette.

Again, providing you can learn the keyboard shortcuts, you can minimize your mouse usage. There’s a helpful list of Acrobat shortcuts on the Adobe website:

A note of caution: my concern is the impact on your speed. One of the keys to being a successful independent editor is efficiency. If you’re already a seasoned mouse-independent Word and Acrobat user, and are introducing new keyboard shortcuts into your existing knowledge base, I suspect the transition will be comfortable and the impact on your speed minimal. If you’re not familiar with these programs, the tools within them, and the access keys, you’ll need practice to build your speed.

In general, though, given your extensive experience in systems development and programming, I can’t see these issues being obstacles for you, Andrew. You’ve probably forgotten more about how to navigate a computer screen than I’ve ever known!

Is a degree necessary?
If you want to copyedit for specialist scientific editing agencies, you’ll likely need at least a Master’s in a related discipline, even a doctorate.

If you plan to work for publishers or packagers (project-management agencies) with book lists in the social sciences, arts, humanities and technology, they’ll be more interested in your professional editorial training, and your ability to perform successfully in an editorial assessment.

If you wish to copyedit and proofread reports, books, journal articles, theses and dissertations for self-publishers, businesses, academics and students, focus on what you can do to solve their problems.

These days, I work exclusively for self-publishing fiction writers. They’re preparing their novels for a crowded market full of discerning readers with the ability to leave critical reviews on Amazon. My job is to help them overcome some of the problems they’ll encounter on that journey, and my website focuses on that rather than on my politics degree.

Did my politics degree help me when I worked exclusively for social science publishers? Perhaps. But I think my years of in-house publishing experience, marketing social science journals, helped more. When some years later I was proofreading a book for a well-known university press and Loïc Wacquant came up in the references but the diacritic in his first name had been omitted, I spotted it. It was my career experience that showed me the way, not my degree.

You, too, can use your IT background to demonstrate your knowledge and experience to clients. But it will only be part of the story. Ultimately, your message will need to be about them – their problems, their concerns, their challenges … and how you are part of the solution.

If you tell that story in a compelling way, you’ll build a brand identity that inspires trust and engagement, one that makes you stand out against your competitors, regardless what subject you didn’t read at university.

And though you don’t want to work exclusively on IT-related material, don’t shy away from using that as your springboard. It’s what you know, what makes you special. No one’s going to hire me to edit an IT book. Why would they when they can hire someone who speaks the language and knows the subject like the back of his hand – someone like you?

Specialize in what you know first. Diversify as the opportunities arise, and develop your brand identity as required. That way you’re playing to your strengths in the start-up phase.

I hope that helps you on your journey. Good luck!

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

Here's more from my audio-book creation series. This time, professional voice artist Ray Greenley talks about doing it yourself, how long it will take and what kit you'll need. Over to Ray ...

In previous posts I talked about platforms (ACX), pricing, and sourcing and evaluating a professional voice artist for your audio book.

I know what you're thinking – 'There’s another option you’re not telling me about on purpose … I could avoid all these issues and just record my book myself!’

Yes, that’s true. You could.

Okay … are you sure? I mean, REALLY sure?

Because producing an audio book does take quite a bit of work. As a rule of thumb, a producer who knows what they’re doing will generally spend aboutsix hours working to produce a single hour of finished audio.

So if your audio book ends up being about 10 hours long, that means you could expect to spend about 60 hours working to produce it once you’ve invested the time in learning how, and the money in the equipment you’ll need.

​There are some decent microphones that plug directly into your computer via USB, but generally you’ll get a better sound with an XLR microphone and a preamp.

Also, vitally, you’ll need a good space to record in. It should be quiet with plenty of sound-absorbing material in it to make the space sound as ‘dead’ as possible.

A walk-in closet can do the trick in a pinch, although chances are you’ll need some additional sound treatment to really get it acceptable.

​By the way, if you live in a busy area with a lot of traffic or other outside noises that you can hear from your space, then your space is no good unless you can somehow insulate against all those outside noises or are willing to record in the middle of the night when (hopefully) things are quiet.

More on preamps and recording software
​Okay, well if you’re really on a budget, you can record using Audacity, which is free recording software. It has some solid tools and can do what you need.
​If you’re willing to invest some money, you can get some reasonably priced software that can do a bit more. I use Studio One Artist from Presonus, and I know some other narrators work well with Reaper. Both of those programs can be had for less than $100.

There are many others as well.

For the preamp, there are some good options at a reasonable price. I currently use aFocusrite Scarlett 2i2, but I’m looking forward to upgrading to aPresonus Studio 2|6soon.

Another reasonable option would be thePresonus AudioBox USB.

One of the nice perks to getting one of the Presonus preamps is that it includes the recording software I mentioned earlier, Studio One Artist.

Once again, there are lots of other options, many of which would probably be sufficient for your needs.

​The big question, the microphoneSo I can tell you that I use a Shure KSM32 and it works well for me. I’m pretty fortunate that I can sound good on such a relatively inexpensive microphone (US$499+).

Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no way to know if YOU will sound good on it, too.Microphones really are very personal tools. One that works great for me might be terrible for you, and vice versa.

Your best bet is to try several out and see what works well. The easiest way to do that is to find a specialty store that sells them; the store will often let you try some out before you buy because they’re aware of the difficulty in matching the microphone to the voice.

​‘Okay, so once I’ve that all set up I’m good to go, right?’So … no, not nearly. You still need to learn how to USE all that stuff, which takes a lot of time and effort.

I know this isn’t a surprise coming from me, but I think you’ll REALLY want to consider carefully when it comes to narrating your own book.

If you think you might really want to get into narration and put in the time and energy to learn how to do it right, then have at it. It’s very challenging work, but also very rewarding.

There arevery few people who have the right talents to be both a writer and a narrator, let alone have the time to train and use both sets of skills. My hat’s off to you!

However, if you’re thinking you want to record your own book because you just want to try to save some money over paying a narrator to do it, or hoping to avoid the work of finding a good narrator who’ll take your book on as a Royalty Share project … please don’t.

I promise it’ll take time you’d probably rather spend writing, and the chances of it really being a high-quality production are not great (no offence).

In the long run, I’d bet it will cost you more than you’ll save, one way or another.

Next time we'll be looking at distribution, briefing the artist, and evaluating the first 15 minutes. Until then, thanks for reading!

Are you fed up with your 404 page? Worried that your clients are too? Broken links are broken conversations. Here’s a wee idea I came up with to fix the disappointment and get you and your visitors talking again … using a chatbot.

​
​What is a 404 page?
A 404 page is where your visitor ends up if they’ve clicked on a link to your website and one of the following has occurred:

The URL is correct but you’ve deleted or moved the page to which it relates

The page on your website is intact but the URL linking to it has been mistyped or edited

Google’s recommendations for a high-quality 404 page

Use friendly language that doesn’t blame the visitor and acknowledges there’s a problem

Ensure the page is branded in a way that matches the rest of your site

Ensure your visitors can see how to get to your home page

Consider offering links to your most popular pages or content

Help readers to report a problem

404 frustrationsWhen you hit a 404 page on a website, you feel frustrated. You’ve gone to that site for a reason – you’re trying to solve a problem, or learn something new, perhaps even buy a service or product.

And if the page you’re searching for has been moved, or if the link you’ve clicked is incorrect, you end up in a place you don’t want to be. It’s a dead end.

If the website’s owner has been thoughtful, there’ll be a search box or menu to help you, perhaps a list of links that might be useful.

Still, you’re the one who has to do the work to get back on the right path because, usually, there isn’t is a way of talking to the owner, a way of saying, ‘I wanted X but I’m stuck. Can you help?’
​
And since you’re already in a grumpy mood, you’re more likely to disengage and leave the site. After all, someone else is probably solving your problem, and maybe if you head back to Google Search, you’ll find a fix rather than a 404.

A beautiful bot! Introducing Lulu …
I’m a fiction copyeditor and proofreader and I love marketing my business! I regularly publish free booklets, PDFs, checklists and templates for fellow editors and proofreaders, and self-publishing authors. I share news about that content via social media and on my blog.

A few weeks ago, I set up a free account with ManyChat. I created Lulu, my Messenger bot. She’s my digital assistant and she’s great – most of the time! We’ve had a few glitches … some digital napping on the job … but in the main she’s successfully helped me deliver my resources to my Facebook network. Instantly.

I learned how to build Lulu from my two favourite pro content marketers Andrew and Pete. August was their ‘Build Your Bot Month’ and four in-depth tutorials taught me everything I needed to know to get going.

All well and good. But was there other ways I could use Lulu to help me engage with my community of editors and authors meaningfully?

Recently, I was looking for something online. It took a while to find what I wanted, but find it I did. Or nearly. The link looked good but landing was a disappointment – a 404. The site was busy and I had no clue where to start. So I did what a lot of people do online. I gave up and went somewhere more interesting instead.
​
That’s not what I want people doing on my site. I want my authors and colleagues to feel that I’m there for them, ready to help, ready to engage. Could Lulu help?

The ManyChat webpage widget
I decided to get Lulu on the case of my 404 page.

I have a lot of content on my website, and even more external links to that content. I’ve been blogging regularly since 2011, and I’ve changed things around on my site more times than I care to mention. And while I do my best to set up 301 redirects when I make changes, there’s no doubt that there are external broken links about which I can do little.

ManyChat has a bunch of growth tools including two embeddable widgets. One is an opt-in box that can be placed anywhere on a website.

I’ve used this widget to provide a more interactive experience for my 404 arrivals, one that enables them to make choices with the click of a button, but ultimately to say, ‘Louise, I wanted X but I’m stuck. Can you help?’

Because they’re contacting me via Messenger, they can get in touch instantly. Which means I can help them quickly. And the quicker I help, the less likely they are to get the hump and go somewhere more interesting instead.
​
What’s great about this widget is the customization element. You can choose colours, images and messages that reflect your clients’ needs and your solutions.

It matters not whether you're an editor like me, or an author, or another type of business owner ... the widget will work for anyone with a website.

Case study: the visitor journey on my 404 page
Now that I’ve set up Lulu, the visitor who lands on my 404 page can take a journey, one that involves the ability to interact directly with me quickly. Here’s what it looks like ...

This is what the visitor sees when they land:

Clicking on the button takes them to a new page:

​Now the conversation beings in Messenger. First, Lulu introduces herself and asks the visitor to provide some information that will determine how the interaction proceeds:

In this example, the visitor has selected ‘Author’. This generates a new set of choices, including the option to have a conversation with me:

​If the visitor chooses to ask for a quote or get some free resources, they’re taken directly to the relevant pages on my website. If they wish to talk to me, Lulu acknowledges the request with a message:

In the Messages section of my Facebook page I receive a notification that someone wishes to chat. Lulu steps aside and the real conversation with me can begin:

Summing up
The ManyChat widget allows us to work with Google’s recommendations: apologetic, friendly language that acknowledges the problem; colours, language and images that are on-brand; clickable links to key pages and core content; and the ability to report the problem directly via an instant conversation.

Landing on a 404 page is a negative experience for the visitor. A chatbot turns that negative experience into an opportunity, one that offers a series of calls to action. By including a discussion in the mix, we can offer one-to-one engagement.

And it’s fun! We’re putting a smile back on a frustrated client’s face, and that can only be a good thing!

Have you used a chatbot for your own 404 page, or as a way of engaging with your clients and colleagues? Let me know in the comments!

​Ever wondered how a professional book index is created? My colleague Vanessa Wells offers an honest and humorous glimpse into the world of a pro indexer – the challenges and the joys, and the 'sense of having created a beautiful thing'.

Let's take a peek into Vanessa's diary ...

I attended the Canadian national indexing conference in Montreal, where we – like most conference attendees – go to strengthen connections with colleagues and expand our professional knowledge. Since the indexing community in Canada is very small, this is a valuable investment and full of good people.

As a result of the conference, I’ve received a referral and am being hired by a university professor to write an index for a 220K-word anthology he’s editing with 22 chapters and almost as many contributors. It’s a ‘straightforward’ index of ‘names and titles’ which, of course, means that it’s both a name and subject index in reality. Yikes.

Against my usual policy, I agree to meet the professor in person, as the campus is close by and it would be faster than exchanging several emails. An excellent meeting results in ironing out expectations, discussing needs and agreeing we’re on the same page! It’s due July 26.

I send him my contract to review, and we discuss rates. Rate structure, I find from speaking to other indexers, is variable. Some people will work for $2/page; others charge much more. A figure I often hear is $5/page, but that definitely depends on your market – geographically and by genre, specialization, and timeline.

​An independent author writing a non-fiction trade book is not going to generate the same fee as a university-paid gig. Some indexers provide other means of calculating their fees, such as a flat project fee.

I tell him my academic rate, and he agrees. I submit my invoice for a non-refundable 30% deposit, payable before work begins.

Proofs are due. They don’t arrive. They’re rescheduled by publisher for the 30th … While publishing timelines are often shifting (there’s a domino effect when a hitch arises), the end deadlines of proofreading and indexing are rarely budged.

​So now I have to recalculate the number of hours and pages per day I’ll have to complete to meet the non-budging due date of July 26. Four days lost means Goodbye, weekends! for the duration.

The file arrives, and I have the 557 pages printed. This gives me a quick look at the book so I can start making notes on paper to get a feel for content. I’ll actually do the index markup on the PDF, but the paper version also provides relief from eye strain when re-searching for notes I’ve made.

​I’m tempted to make and post a gif of this picture of the printed manuscript intercut with a still from the shower scene from Psycho, with the insane violin accompaniment, but I don’t have time. Francis Bacon understands how I’m feeling, however.

It’s a long weekend here for #Canada150, our sesquicentenary. I’m so wiped from the previous month of conferences and making a second website for the new arm of my business that I take (most of) the weekend off. I can’t afford to get sick during this project. Self-care and all that.

Forgot I start a weekly course on Tuesday afternoons for the summer, with an appointment this morning. Will have to start tomorrow. Now that I’ve lost another 5 days, I’ll have not only to work weekends but very long days, everyday. My bad.

21 days to go: I begin the pre-read (see above photo) to start gathering my thoughts on how I’ll approach this behemoth. And I need at least 3 days at the end to edit the written index, so really I only have 18 days available.
​
I note there are A LOT of errors still in the MS. I judiciously email AU to double check that it’s been edited and that no other file is forthcoming. He confirms it has been copyedited … Sigh.

Re-install my $500USD indexing software on my new PC. Pay $39 for TextExpander, which is an online tool that lets you build a library of ‘snippets’, sort of like hot keys or macros, but it’s much simpler and faster. Using TextExpander for repeated, long index headings is making my life so much easier: it works pretty well with .ucdx files!

I’m already 50 pages behind. Indexing academic books is so much harder because you have to interpret the often-verbose language to get to the ideas (then re-edit them in your mind) and THEN start forming index relationships between the ideas on that and every other page.

​Since there are almost two dozen authors in this anthology, I’m doing a lot of mental shifts. Why do I pine for indexes so much when they can be so draining?!?

I’m being foiled by the very poor copyediting that was(n’t) done. I email the author-editor several times regarding his preferences for word options that I’m finding in the errata …

​Working on a Saturday is particularly annoying when you hear other people having a great day off. Such is the freelance life.

Here’s how I start an indexing day. Wish I had more than one monitor and can’t believe I used to do this on a 15-inch one!

CINDEX software file open; Google to check MS info, with related sites and academic books on the subject; book PDF marked up with terms needing indexing; and TextExpander to cut down on keyboard strokes. For the time being, I just type the entries into the index; refining connections comes later.

I emailed the author again about the serious issues around the practically non-existent copyediting of this book. It’s causing me to complete about 3pg/hr instead of 5–10pg/hr, never mind that I’m not being paid to correct such things, so again my budgeted time has to be rethought.

He’d like errata forwarded to him so he can take the examples to the publisher and complain. (Understandably, he just doesn’t realize how much is involved in corrections before indexing can be done: research, confirm which instance is the error, note error, find other instances of it in MS, return to indexing the term and fixing all related cross-references).

Ctl+F is my BFF. Wish I still drank alcohol.
​
And for all you fellow CCLs, here’s what’s behind it all (because this, after all, is what’s important in life, not crying over indexes).

I had a good phone chat with the author about the terrible editing. (Again breaking the rules; normally I never share my number – learned the hard way with an abusive client once – but there’s too much to discuss via email.)

We’re hatching a plan to shame the publisher into redoing the copyediting or letting me do it. Either way, my schedule is messed up, and he’s sympathetic. What he’s told me about their process with him this far is appalling.

Email from author: basically, the publisher will redo the copyediting after indexing (!!!). This is a problem because it can affect pagination, thus rendering entries incorrect. I asked that my name not be included due to peer reviews in a trade journal, and I wouldn’t want residual index errors to be ascribed to me. The prof was cool with this; I am not, but that’s life in publishing.

Slogging away, only getting about 35 pages/day done. Have to step it up to get in an extra day for editing the index. I hired a subcontractor to proofread it the day before it’s due. I need an emoji for dollar bills flying away. [Note from Louise: I've obliged.]

Good thing I hate summer weather. I worked smarter today, however, using more automations.

Panic time. I’m only at pg 385 out of 557 and I have less than 4 indexing days left before I start editing.

Trying a new – and, to me, risky – tactic: indexing on the fly, not marking up first. I’ll see how one chapter goes. I’ve got to save time!
​
I’ve subcontracted out a small job (1–2 hrs) due to the copyedit snafu. I need every hour I can get. I figure it’ll be worth the money.

What happened to yesterday? Feel like I’m getting sick, which would be disastrous. As an editor, I can always subcontract out a project for an emergency, but not only does indexing have a smaller pool of trained professionals, the intricacies of indexing style are so individual that really no one could easily or seamlessly take over. At least, not if the index is to retain its integrity and essence. Sigh.

Yay, I’m not sick! Done the inputting of entries! 6,388 records, which is on par for a book of this size and topic. The hard part is yet to come: finessing the cross-references and making links to interrelated concepts. While the software can help check for bad references and missing locators, there are many variables to consider. Some cross-references will have to be truncated and reworked; others will simply have to go; and yet others will require double posting due to wording.

This is the part that indexers must educate authors and publishers about – explaining that Word’s ‘indexing’ program just cannot replace a trained human brain. Word creates a concordance: that’s like taking the ingredients off a cereal box and listing them in alphabetical order.

An index, analogously, takes the main words, interrelates them, looks at their nutrient values and considers how the ingredients work to give us a food product, but we can also just know what’s in there if that’s all we need.

In fact, there’s our professional comparison: indexers are the food chemists of the book world – ta da!
​
This stage is exciting and a bit terrifying. I read an article in our UK journal, The Indexer, wherein another indexer (Margie Towery, Ten Characteristics of Quality Indexes) admitted to having two moments of feeling stuck during the process: getting started and this stage. Glad I’m not the only one!

I’m just doing some basic cleanup so that I can get to the editing described yesterday. Fixing typos deletes erroneously duplicated entries and ensures consistency: now’s the time to go back to the MS and confirm correct spellings; get rid of unnecessary, duplicated or differently phrased duplicate subheadings (the latter because you don’t see repeats in the Draft Format that you might have entered previously); add subheadings for entries that have too many unrelated locators, etc.
​
It’s 11 a.m. and I’m only at the Cs. As the meteorologist at the beginning of Twister says, ‘This is going to be a long day’…

Finished cleanup from the Ms to Z; also a lot of double-checking that sufficient entries existed for major and meta topics, as well as the book’s contributors, which the author-editor requested. I’ve planned out the editing for tomorrow before a review by software on Monday.
​
And to prevent potential meltdowns, I save every 30 minutes or so, and back up to hard drive and Dropbox every 4 hours. That’s because once someone turned off the fuse box, and I lost a huge part of an index I had been working on. Live and learn.

Sunday morning, so starting late at 10 a.m. I had a good night’s sleep, which is great because today’s to-do list is intimidating … Except my optical mouse isn’t working, so thank god I have a wired spare. Kind of like giving a chef a loaner knife they’re not used to.

The mouse worked after a reboot, but the reboot took about 20 mins, so essentially I’m half an hour behind again.
​
I can’t just Control + F terms in the PDF, type the page numbers in and I’m done: half of them are in citations, references or footnotes, and the latter should usually only be included when they’re substantive (which can take some time to decide). So whittling down the number is time-consuming. Then they have to be organized by thought. Then entered, and without page-number errors.

Butterflies. I heard a reminder on the radio yesterday talking about how, philosophically, Good Enough should be good enough, i.e. that striving for perfection is not good for us. I don’t think this is the inclination of the indexer (or editor or proofreader for that matter), no matter who says it. But I’m sure Annie Lamott would tell us to be gentler with our sorry-ass selves.

I confirmed that the proofreader is available to complete their part tomorrow. On to my penultimate review …

Due to other commitments, I had to forget about the index today and trust it would be well proofread by my subcontractor. Not easy to do ...

Bad dreams all night about repeatedly calling said subcontractor because the file was late.

Spent several hours correcting, finessing, re-sorting (getting the locator order right – Roman numerals, ascending page numbers interspersed with those with an i for illustration (sometimes we just put illustrated page numbers in italics), so it would show thus: ix–x, 132, i234, 496), and double-checking things before putting it in a double-columned .rtf file.

I’ve heard that before this editing stage, an error rate for page numbers of about 10% can occur, but with the ones my subcontractor found, I was at 0.002% errors: I hope that’s true! Corrected, I hope it’s near-perfect.

Even human indexers with software can make mistakes. In a book of 220K words to be considered for indexing, perfection cannot be expected.
​
I’ve clicked Send …

Anti-climax: the author couldn’t access the file properly (the .rtf was showing up strangely), so he just asked for a new file format. He hadn’t got past the first 10 lines. But he did thank me for my ‘copious explanatory notes’, i.e. my return-file letter, which outlined info about the parameters of the index and changes that had to be used.

The prof is going to read the index this weekend, as he’s travelling. I could have had extra days after all! Waah!

Author got back to me with a few queries and the following: ‘Thanks for the painstaking and thorough job – it’s clear you took a lot of care, and I appreciate that … Thanks again for all of your hard work.’

Hopefully he’ll call me again in the future or refer a colleague to me. But after a few days’ reflection and relaxation, I’m not sure I’ll accept such a long and dense manuscript again – unless it truly is strictly names and titles!

And I’ve realized that an index you’ve written is more like your baby than a book edit: there’s the same pride of accomplishment, but there’s more of a sense of having created a beautiful thing.
​
And the labour and delivery stories are way better!

Vanessa Wells is a copyeditor, proofreader and indexer who taught Latin for almost 20 years before becoming a freelance editor. When she’s not working, she’s either reading, watching films, or cat-sitting for senior cats with special medical needs. She lives in Toronto, Canada.www.wellsreadediting.ca

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Another email from a Parlour reader ... the answer will be of interest to anyone with similar manual dexterity issues and who is considering a career as an proofreader ...

Rachel asks:

‘I am looking into a career in proofreading. I have multiple sclerosis and need to work from home. I was wondering if you know whether any of the online courses cover the use of things such as Track Changes. Unfortunately, I have lost almost all manual dexterity and am unable to mark up on hard copy. I am, however, able to use a keyboard and mouse comfortably.’

Thanks so much for your question, Rachel.

So the good news is that because you can use a keyboard and mouse, and you therefore prefer to work onscreen, professional proofreading is certainly a viable option for you (assuming your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are up to scratch, and you're ready to market your business effectively).

Furthermore, there are industry-recognized training courses and resources that will support your onscreen learning.

One thing we need to look at is how different client types’ expectations of what proofreading entails present challenges for you.

It’s important to me that you’re forewarned about this so that you can target your clients appropriately, and communicate your service offering in a way that makes it clear what you will and won’t do.

I’ll tackle that issue first and then move on to the training options available.

Proofreading – expectations and possible challenges
So, you’ve told me that your MS affects your manual dexterity, but my first thought was whether it also leads to fatigue. You didn’t mention this in your email, but I think it’s worth discussing for reasons that I hope will become clear.

In my first decade of proofreading practice, almost all of my clients were mainstream publishers. Now I work exclusively with self-publishers (a few businesses but primarily writers of fiction).

What’s clear from my experience is that the expectations of what has to be done and how it has to be done often differ depending on client type.

Furthermore, how much will be done by the proofreader is often (though not always) quite different.

What and how much does a proofreader do? Traditional publishers
When working for traditional publishers, a proofreader is usually annotating designed page proofs. These are the pages (either paper or digital) that are almost identical to what readers would see if they pulled a book off the shelf.

It’s a quality-control check of a book that’s been through developmental-, line- and copy-editing. The author has reviewed the files at each stage. Once the team is happy that the book’s ready to be laid out, an interior designer or typesetter will format the book to professional, industry-recognized standards.

The proofreader’s job is to find anything missed during an extensive copy-edit, that no errors have been introduced at design stage, and that the various elements of the book are rendered consistently, correctly, and according to the design brief.

In this case, the proofreader is looking at more than just spelling, punctuation and grammar. She’s also spotting problems with page numbering, chapter headings, line spacing, paragraph indentation, running heads, image captions, table and figure numbering, widows and orphans, page depth, prelims and end matter, and more.

In my experience, because most of the problems in the text have already been attended to during previous rounds of editing, there might be only a few changes that warrant querying or marking up on each page.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but, on the whole, most of a proofreader’s time is spent carefully reading and checking rather than marking up.
That’s important for you because while your hand movement is somewhat impaired, your vision isn’t.

And because you wouldn’t have to make thousands of changes, the strain on your hands wouldn’t be excessive or challenging.

What and how much does a proofreader do? Non-publishers
Outside of the mainstream publishing industry, things become a little more tangled. The role of the proofreader is not nearly so well defined.

It’s not unusual for clients to ask for a service they call ‘proofreading’ but that a traditional publisher would call ‘copy-editing or even ‘line editing’. Here the raw text is amended (or suggested recasts to the text are made using Word’s commenting tool).

Furthermore, it’s not unusual for the so-called proofreader to be the first professional to work on the text.

And that means that the changes made might well run into the thousands. We’re not talking about a few amendments on each page, but hundreds per chapter, perhaps even per several pages.
​
Of course, it does vary, but every change, every query, requires the use of one’s hands. So you need to be aware of the potential impact of this kind of work on your health, and think carefully about how it will affect your hands and your fatigue levels.

I’m not saying that working for non-publishers isn’t an option for you. Rather, you’ll need to take your speed and fatigue levels into account and factor them into the time you assign to complete projects.

If you're working in Word, I suspect that =2K–10K-word business documents, Master’s dissertations, journal articles, short stories, brochures and newsletters won't present you with the same challenges as book-length work of 80K–100K words will.

How does a proofreader mark up? Traditional publishers
Because the proofreader is usually providing a pre-publication quality-control check on designed page proofs, most publishers like the annotations to take the form of industry-recognized proof-correction marks. In the UK, these are BS 5261C:2005.

Any decent professional training course will teach you how to use these appropriately.

Traditionally, these annotations were made on paper but publishers are increasingly providing PDF proofs.

This affords you an opportunity because you can use a keyboard and mouse to annotate the page proofs in a way that mirrors a paper markup. There are a few options, but many proofreaders use a combination of a PDF editor’s (e.g. Adobe Reader DC, Acrobat Pro, or PDF-XChange) onboard comment and markup tools and digital proofreading symbols (custom stamps).

I supply free files of stamps that proofreaders can download and install in the stamp palettes of their PDF editors. These stamps conform to BS 5261C:2005.

How does a proofreader mark up? Non-publishers
Because many non-publishers supply Word files, you’ll be working directly in Word and using Track Changes.

You’ll also be able to take advantage of several macro suites and find/replace strings that will improve your efficiency and reduce the strain on your wrists and fingers.

That’s good news for all of us – with or without MS or other manual-dexterity issues – in terms of time, quality and consistency.

Summary of what, how, and how much
So, all in all, it’s worth your taking the time to think about the types of clients you’ll work for, how many changes you might be required to make, how those client types will expect you to mark up, what length the projects will be, how long it will take you to complete the different project types, and how all of those things fit in with your specific health condition.

Professional training
My two recommended online proofreading training providers in the UK are the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and The Publishing Training Centre.

The SfEP has practical online courses on the technical aspects of professional proofreading, a grammar brush-up course, and editing in Word. Of the latter, the SfEP says, ‘It includes chapters on styles and templates, find & replace and wildcards, and macros. Guest chapters have been written by Paul Beverley on FRedit, Daniel Heuman on PerfectIt and Jack Lyon on The Editorium. All chapters contain downloadable study notes, exercises and model answers.’

The PTC offers a grammar course, and its flagship Basic Proofreading course.
Before you sign up, I’d recommend you have a conversation with either or both organizations in order to assure yourself that the course materials are usable in a way that suits your needs.

Additionally, there are numerous free online tutorials and screencasts on how to use Word’s Track Changes, so Google will be your friend here. Search for one that matches your own version of Word.

The most important issue for any professional proofreader is understanding first what to change, and making sure that she and the client are on the same page, figuratively speaking, about what degree of intervention is expected and how it will be rendered.

Online books and resources
Here are some resources that should help you on your journey:

My favourite punctuation guide is R.L. Trask’s Penguin Guide to Punctuation – straight to the point, lots of easy-to-understand examples, logically organized, and short! If you can manage print, there’s a paperback on Amazon.

If you need an online version, try this guide by the same author, and available free online via the University of Sussex: Guide to Punctuation.

New Hart’s Rules online: If you’re a UK library member, you can access the premium version of Oxford Dictionaries, which includes NHR and a number of other excellent online grammar and style resources. I like it because it’s easier to search than the paper version, but you’ll benefit from the fact that you can access its content using a keyboard and mouse. You'll need your library card number.

Jack Lyon’s Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word is brilliant for helping the complete novice learn how to use wildcards to save time when editing/proofreading Word docs. It’s a small book, but, again, if the print version’s going to impede access, then use Google Search. Try, for example, Graham Mayor’s Find and Replace using Wildcards.

PerfectIt is a simply gorgeous Word add-in that, in my opinion, is a must-have for any professional editor or proofreader working in Word. There are lots of tutorials on the developer’s website.

Rich Adin’s EditTools is also popular with non-fiction Word editors and proofreaders.

​And let’s not forget the mountain of macros available via Paul Beverley – do check these out; they’re all free!

Finally, for a tiny but excellent summary of BS 5261C:2005 proof-correction marks, visit the SfEP website. There are freebies online but they’re not always up to date. This is still, for me, the best and cheapest reference guide to the marks. It comes as a sturdy piece of folded card, so I’m hoping it won’t be a challenge for your hands.

I hope this helps you move forward, Rachel, and wish you all the very best in your search for a career that will work for you alongside your MS rather than in opposition to it.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

If you’re an editor or proofreader who’s never once switched off Track Changes (TC) in the middle of an edit and then forgotten to toggle it back on again, congratulations – you’re a rare creature indeed!

​I’m not rare. I’ve done it several times. If you’re like me, you know that sinking feeling – that you’re going to have to go back to where you stopped tracking and redo the work. I've come close to weeping when this has happened. It’s a waste of precious, precious time, pure and simple!

​Until recently, my solution consisted of frequently double-checking whether TC was on or off. No big deal, you might think. After all, it’s easy enough to take your eye up to the TC button on the Review tab and see whether it’s greyed out – only a tenth of a second. But those tenths add up.

Furthermore, I’m not billing my clients for my attention to the TC button; I’m billing them for proofreading and editing. I should be focusing on the text, not distracting myself with checking that TC is on.

I could work with ‘All Markup’ (or ‘Final Showing Markup’ in earlier versions of Word) showing, but that’s just another distraction. I want my eyes and brain to focus on what my client has written, not what I’ve amended.

Paul Beverley, naturally, has the solution. It’s a macro called VisibleTrackOff4 and it’s amazing!

Even if you don’t like macros, don’t use macros, are wary of macros, this is one macro that you should consider installing anyway. Trust me. It's a lifesaver.

By the end of this article, you’ll know how to ensure you never forget you’ve switched off Track Changes. I’ll show you the following:

How it works

How to install it

How to run it efficiently

Alternative versions with different formatting options

How it works
In brief, VisibleTrackOff4 is an alternative TC on/off switch. You run this macro instead of using Word’s TC button.
​
I work in Windows 10 with Word 2016. On my screen, the TC button is accessible via the ribbon in the Review tab. Your view may be slightly different.

When you use VisibleTrackOff4 (rather than the TC button shown above) to switch on TC, your page appears white, as usual. However, when you use it to switch off TC, your page turns yellow. As you toggle TC on and off, your page colour toggles too. If the page is yellow, you know TC is off. That’s something you can’t miss, and that’s why it’s foolproof.

View with Track Changes ON

View with Track Changes OFF

To use the macro efficiently, you can do one of the following:

Create a shortcut key

Add the macro to your Quick Access Toolbar

Create a custom button in your ribbon (Word version 2010 onwards)

I’ll show you how to do all three in the ‘How to run it efficiently’ section below.

Go to the right-hand ‘Macros’ column. Scroll down and select VisibleTrackOff4

Type in your preferred shortcut key

Click on the ‘Assign’ button followed by the ‘Close’ button

Add the macro to your Quick Access Toolbar

Right-click anywhere on the ribbon

Select ‘Customize Quick Access Toolbar’

From the drop-down ‘Choose commands from:’ box, choose ‘Macros’

Scroll down to find the macro and click on it

Click on the ‘Add’ button followed by the ‘OK’ button

​This is what your new button will look like:

Create a custom button in your ribbon(Word version 2010 onwards)

Right-click anywhere on the ribbon

Select ‘Customize the Ribbon’

Look to the right-hand column

Scroll down and click on ‘Review’

Click on the subentry ‘Tracking’

Click the ‘New Group’ button

Now look to the left-hand column

From the drop-down ‘Choose commands from:’ box, choose ‘Macros’

Scroll down to find the macro and click on it to select it

Go back to the right-hand column and click on ‘New Group (Custom)’

Click the ‘Add’ button followed by the ‘OK’ button

This is what your new button will look like:

Other versionsYou don’t have to go for the yellow-page effect. Paul’s provided other options. The installation and quick-access instructions are the same; only the script you’ll need to copy and paste is different:

VisibleTrackOff – embossed effect

VisibleTrackOff2 – blue dotted underline

VisibleTrackOff3 – wiggly lines

TrackOnOffAudible – beeps

​Summing upI prefer the yellow-page effect because it’s so obvious, and because it doesn’t interfere with my view of the text while I’m amending with TC off.

I also prefer to run the macro with a custom ribbon-based button because it’s right up there alongside Word’s TC button, which is what I’m used to. I’ve created a shortcut key so that I have choice in the matter. This comes in handy when I need regular access to the Styles tab and don’t want to keep switching the tabs on the ribbon.

I urge you to try this macro. Remember, you need neveragain endure the frustration of having forgotten to switch on Track Changes!

P.S. My colleague Adrienne Montgomerie was single-handedly responsible for showing me how easy it is to customize the ribbon so that you can easily and quickly access any command. Her article ‘Make a Custom Tab on Word’s Ribbon’ is a must-read if you want to increase your onscreen efficiency.

And, as always, thanks to Paul Beverley for creating some brilliant macros, and for giving me permission to bang on about them via my blog!

My Student Proofreading Toolkit includes 17 handy Word find/replace strings and wildcard searches that will help you tidy up your PhD thesis or Master’s dissertation before you hand it over to a third-party professional proofreader or submit it to your university’s assessors.

These DIY tips are designed to complement, not replace, a rigorous proofread. You can polish your document at any stage, but, for the sake of efficiency, I recommend carrying out the tasks after you've finished writing your thesis or dissertation and reviewed its purpose, content and structure.

No advanced technical knowledge is required – even the novice Word user will be able to implement these tasks by following the step-by-step instructions (and associated screenshots). You can even select and copy some of the longer find/replace and wildcard search strings from the PDF.

A word of caution – always save a backup copy of your file first, just in case you implement changes incorrectly. It's easier to revert to a fallback document than to repair a damaged one. I always test complex find/replace and wildcard search strings beforehand.

The self-editing tips I’ve chosen are some of my personal favourites. I hope you find them as useful as I do!

In a nutshell, it allows you to switch around a word (or words) with a single keyboard shortcut. I use it to save time with every single Word-based project I work on.

​So imagine that you’re editing or proofreading a Word file in which the author repeatedly uses ‘which’ for restrictive relative clauses. You want to change it to ‘that’. This means carrying out three small actions: select, delete and retype.

That’s not a problem if the issue occurs twice in a file, but if it occurs tens or hundreds of times, those seconds are going to add up and eat into your hourly rate. And let’s not get started on the ache in your wrist!

Naturally, you might notice that a particular job has a number of similar niggles that you want to attend to, in which case this macro will be even more of a productivity-enhancer.

Give it a whirl!

MultiSwitch in action
To run MultiSwitch, you simply place your cursor before or in the word you want to change (in our example here, ‘which’), and hit your keyboard shortcut (I’ve assigned alt-3, but you can choose whatever you like). Then, bingo, the macro amends ‘which’ to ‘that’.

Here's a teeny-tiny video of me using MultiSwitch. This demo aims merely to show you where to place the cursor prior to hitting your assigned shortcut key command, and what you will see on your screen (a little flickering as the macro makes the switch).

​If you don’t know how to assign a keyboard shortcut, don’t worry – I’ll show you how later in the article.

The beauty of MultiSwitch is that you need only one keyboard shortcut for a ton of different word switches. Here are a few examples from my switch list:

that – which

which – that

last – past

like – such as

less – fewer

will not – won't

is not – isn't

he is – he's

they will – they'll

I love this macro for editing fiction because it's so quick to create contractions when I'm helping the author create a more informal narrative, or dialogue that's closer to natural speech.

Save the zipped folder to your computer and extract three files: one is an overview of the macros – what they are, what they do, how to store them and so on – plus all the programs themselves; another contains just the actual macro programs; a third is called ‘Beginners Start Here’; and the final file is a style sheet. The file you need to open in Word is ‘The Macros’.

Use Word’s navigation menu on a Mac (or Ctrl F on a PC) to open the Find function. Type ‘Sub MultiSwitch’ into the search field and hit ‘Return’ twice. That will take you to the start of the relevant script.

Select and copy the script from ‘Sub MultiSwitch()’ down to ‘End Sub’.

Still working in Word, open the ‘View’ tab and click on the ‘Macros’ icon on the ribbon:

A new window will open.

If you don’t have any macros already loaded:

Create a test macro that you can delete later.

First, make sure the ‘Normal.dotm’ template is showing in the ‘Macros in:’ box.

Type ‘TEST’ into the ‘Macro name:’ box.

Click on the ‘Create’ button.

Your TEST macro will now show up. From now on, it’ll be easy as pie to add additional macros.

If you already have macros loaded (your TEST macro or any other):

Click on ‘Edit’.

​​
This will open up another window:

If necessary, use the scroll bar to take you to the bottom of the text.

​The text in red shows how I’ve customized the script to suit my needs – you need to put in your own location.

Now you can close the window by clicking on the ‘X’ in the top right-hand corner. Do the same with the general Visual Basic window too. Don’t worry if you get a message about a debugger – just press ‘OK’.

Creating the keyboard shortcut for running MultiSwitch
If you don't know how to create keyboard shortcuts, this section's for you. If you do know how to do this, you don't need to read any further!

I'm working in Word 2016 on a PC. If you are too, the instructions are as follows:

In Word, select ‘File’, ‘Options’, ‘Customize Ribbon’ (1).

Click on ‘Customize’ (2). A new box will open up entitled ‘Customize Keyboard’.

​(If you are working in a different version of Word, see pp. 14–15 of the ‘ComputerTools4Eds’ file in the Macros folder that you've downloaded from Paul’s site in order to install this macro. There, he provides details of the process for different versions of the software.)

The image below shows how I assigned a keyboard shortcut to another macro called ‘UndoHighlight’. The steps are exactly the same.

That's it! I hope this macro saves you as much time as it's saving me!

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
​
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).

One of my own specialisms is proofreading for independent fiction authors. I prefer to build my quotations based on a word count.

Then again, I know copy-editors who prefer to build their quotations based on the total number of hours a project will take.

​If you prefer a per-word model, then you may like to consider using a progressive-pricing array formula. It’s not the only way of doing things, certainly, but it’s something I’ve tested and am currently working with. I like this model because it incorporates economies of scale.

Before I explain how the progressive-pricing array works, a very quick word on price presentation versus determination.

Price presentation versus determinationPrice presentation and determination are two different things.

How we present our quotations to clients should be determined by what our clients have asked for. If the client has asked for an estimated bottom-line project fee in euros and I respond with a £ per 1,000 words figure, I’m not going to instil confidence in them that I can follow a brief.

How we determine a price should be based on our own needs and requirements. Once we’ve determined what the price will be, we can present it in the way that our client has requested.

Economies of scale
When a proofreader is working on larger projects, there are economies of scale. I’m currently working with an independent fiction author on nine books (which I’m proofreading over a five-month period).

Most of the projects are between 70,000 and 80,000 words in length; a couple are around the 50,000-word mark; and one is a short story with just over 10,000 words. All of the books feature the same central protagonist and a small cast of supporting characters.

The serial nature of the content, the reappearance of key characters, and the concentration of action in predominantly one fictitious location all serve to save me time as I move through each book. This means:

I don’t have to build a style sheet from scratch.

The author’s preferences are stable.

I’m getting to ‘know’ the characters so I spot inconsistencies more quickly and easily as time goes on.

I’m increasingly familiar with the author’s writing style, so there’s less head-scratching time.

Even so, the average number of words proofread per hour was fewer for the 10K-word short story than for the previous 70K-word novel. And in the first few hours of working on the the 70K-word novel, I proofread fewer words per hour than was the case in the hours that followed.

That’s because, even with all the benefits of working on a series, each book still needs a certain amount of ‘stuff’ done to it in its own right:

Plus, of course, the actual word-by-word proofread for grammar, spelling and punctuation issues.

If we take the series element out of the equation, and compare the proofreading of two books in a similar genre for two separate authors, the impact of project length for the proofreader can become even more stark.

Consequently, I want to price the 30K-word novella differently from the 100K-word tome. It’s for this reason that while I like to build my quotations on a per-word basis, I don’t want something as straightforward as a £6, £8 or £10 per 1,000 words model. Instead, I want something that respects the economies of scale that come with larger projects. This is where the array comes into its own.

How does a progressive-pricing array formula work?
An array formula can look at a number (a word count, in our case) and then, based on a set of ranges that we’ve provided, price those ranges accordingly. Here’s a very basic example. You might set up your array such that the following are true:

First 5,000 words are priced at £25 per 1,000 words.

The next 10,000 words are priced at £10 per 1,000 words.

The next 20,000 words after that are priced at £7 per 1,000 words.

The next 50,000 words after that are priced at £6 per 1,000 words.

This would result in the following quotes:

(1) If you were asked to provide a quotation for proofreading a 2,000-word article, the price would be £50 (£25 per 1000 words).

(2) If you were asked to quote fora 10,000-word short story, the price would be £175. This is based on:

£25 per 1,000 words for the first 5,000 words (£125)

plus £10 per 1,000 words for the remaining 5,000 words (£50)

The average price per 1,000 words works out at £17.50.

(3) If you were asked to quote for a 70,000-word book, the price would be £575. This is based on:

£25 per 1,000 words for the first 5,000 words (£125)

plus £10 per 1,000 words for the next 10,000 words (£100)

plus £7 per 1,000 words for the next 20,000 words (£140)

plus £6 per 1,000 words for the next 35,000 words (£210)

​The average price per 1,000 words works out at £8.21 and reflects the economies of scale that the proofreader will be able to benefit from because of the size of the book.

The example given is similar to the setup I wanted for my own quotation tool, and it provides a formula that I was able to tweak for my own data. See also my downloadable sample below.

Here's a screen shot of what a progressive-pricing array formula might look like in Excel.

And here's an Excel template you can download and adapt to suit your own preferences. Note that you'll need to look carefully at, and amend, the array-formula box to ensure that the cell descriptions are correct for your data (that's the fiddly bit!).

One size doesn’t fit all
The usual caveat applies – my way certainly isn’t the best way or the only way! It’s just one approach of several. I wanted to share my experience with you so that if you fancy testing a progressive-pricing array, you have a framework to get you started.

In practice, you might want to build more ranges into your array formula to provide increased flexibility. The numbers I’ve used above are just for illustrative purposes.

I find the array formula useful for ballpark quotations because I want to provide a quick quote based on a word count. Obviously, any professional proofreading project needs to be evaluated on more than just a word count before terms are agreed and confirmed.

Those editorial professionals working with complex projects that require varying levels of intervention might find a progressive-pricing array formula far too limiting. It functions well for me as a proofreader because of the nature of my work.

I do, however, have different arrays set up for different client types (e.g. students for whom English is a second language; independent authors whose first language is English) and for different levels of proofreading service.

​The prices I assign to the various ranges are different in order to reflect the variances in how I work with the text and the speed at which I am able to proofread.

How do you build a price for editorial work?
How do you build your quotations? Per hour, per word, per day, per project? Have you tested different approaches for building your fees? And do you find that different models work better for different types of editorial work?

What I will do is highlight the new features that I find most useful when proofreading and copyediting for those clients who want me to work directly in Word. Readers who are specialist copy-editors or who have different client groups may well have different preferences.
​Disclaimer: I have a PerfectIt licence and am a long-time user of the software. However, the developer has not asked me to write this review, nor have I been remunerated in any way for doing so.

The views expressed herein are mine and based solely on my experience of using PerfectIt on a regular basis.

What is it?
For those readers who are not familiar with this software, PerfectIt 3 is a sophisticated consistency checker. By customizing its built-in style sheets, or creating your own, you can define your preferences and let PerfectIt locate variations and possible errors.

Note: PerfectIt is not compatible with Macs. If you’re a Mac user, you’ll need software that specializes in enabling Windows applications to be run on a Mac (e.g. VMware Fusion or Parallels).

What's so brilliant about PerfectIt 3?
There are two reasons why I fell in love all over again.

Daniel Heuman added some fabulous new or improved features to PerfectIt 3. These enabled me to take what I’d learned about harnessing the power of Word’s wildcard searches and build that into my customization of PerfectIt.

To get the best out of PerfectIt, you must tell it what you want it to do. That does mean launching one of the style sheets and taking the time to look at all the various options (and there are a lot).

In my early days of using PerfectIt, I didn’t do this. The result was that I didn’t get the most out of the software because it was ignoring inconsistencies (or flagging up false positives) that I'd marked as not relevant, when the opposite was true.

It isn’t that PerfectIt wasn’t working properly, but rather that I wasn’t.

Here are two examples:

In some of the files I work on (e.g. fiction texts), I want to spell out most numbers. Before I started paying serious attention to all the options available for customization in PerfectIt’s Style Sheet Editor,

I would run the program and find that it missed a lot. It’s only when I studied the Settings and Fine-tuning tabs in the Style Sheet Editor that I realized why.

I was still asking PerfectIt to ignore numerals under certain conditions – conditions that didn’t apply to the type of work I was doing. By customizing the instructions, I was able to enforce my own preference. All those previous misses turned into hits.

PerfectIt is a Word add-on. If you can’t get the best out of Word, you won’t get the best out of PerfectIt. Until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t utilizing the Wildcards function in PerfectIt’s Style Sheet Editor.

Cannier users of Word will be shocked that I didn’t know how to locate inconsistencies in author/date in-text citations (e.g. (Harnby, 2013) vs (Harnby 2013) using wildcard searching. I could find the problems in Word but I couldn’t automatically fix them – all the replacing was done manually (yeah, I know!).

And because I couldn’t do the automatic fix in Word, I couldn’t do the fix in PerfectIt. When I did learn how to do it in Word, I made PerfectIt work harder for me and saved myself a tonne of time.

There’s a developer summary of all the new features and improvements of PerfectIt at ‘What’s new in Version 3’. The following is a brief overview of what I love the most.

Wildcard searches
PerfectIt 3 allows you to harness the power of wildcard searches using exactly the same terms that you’d use in Word.

I love this feature because it means I can work more efficiently – I don’t have to run a set of find/replace searches in Word and then go and do a bunch of other stuff in PerfectIt. I can consolidate all my wildcard searches in one place, which saves me time.

Example: one of my clients has a house style that asks for comma separators in four-digit numbers (e.g. 2,999), but fixed spaces in five-digit (and above) numbers, e.g. 12 999 or 112 999. In Word, the wildcard search is:

FIND: ([0-9]{2,3}),([0-9]{3})
REPLACE: \1^s\2

I can add those exact same instructions into a PerfectIt style sheet, customizing it via the Wildcards section in the Style Sheet Editor. Then, every time I use that style sheet, PerfectIt will test for the pattern in red and adjust the comma to a space.

Note that you can tell PerfectIt to always use comma separators (or alternative renderings) but the wildcard search comes into its own when your house style asks for inconsistency (as in this example).

Missing brackets and quotation marks
This is a gem for those of us who work on academic projects with lots of brackets (e.g. author/date citations or quoted matter) and those of us who proofread and edit fiction (e.g. dialogue).

To take advantage of this function, launch PerfectIt, select your preferred style sheet and click on the Tests in the sidebar to activate the dropdown menu. Then select ‘Tests and Options’, choose ‘Formatting’ and make sure that ‘Brackets and Quotes Left Open’ is checked.

Oxford/serial comma
The debate about whether the Oxford comma is useful or unnecessary rumbles on in the world of words. No matter – editors and proofreaders often find themselves instructed by their client to use it or bin it (except where enforcing the preference would lead to a lack of clarity).

PerfectIt allows you to set a preference either way – just make sure the test is checked (it’s in the ‘Formatting’ section mentioned above, and that you’ve actually set the preference.

To tell PerfectIt what to do, click on ‘Edit Current Style’ on the top ribbon, choose ‘Settings’, scroll down to ‘Oxford (Serial) Commas’ and make your choice.

Italics
If your client has insisted that a particular word is italicized (or not), you’ll love this function. PerfectIt already has a built-in list of words that can be styled, but you can add your own.

Here’s a quick example: some clients want [sic], some want [sic] and some don’t care as long as it’s consistent. In ‘Edit Current Style’ on the top ribbon, select ‘Italics’. Then choose an existing word or add your own.

You can then tell PerfectIt whether it should be italic, Roman, consistent, or italic at first use only. This is one of those functions that really does save time if you work on lengthy academic texts.

Heading format
Here, again, PerfectIt 3 enables us to harness the power of Word’s styles palette. You can set your preferences for several different heading levels, e.g. sentence case, initial caps on significant words, upper case, or all initial capitals.

As with the italics check, this is particularly useful when working on academic books and theses.

Additionally, those who regularly work with clients who have a specific house style that explicitly defines how heading levels should be formatted (e.g. journal article editors) will love this too, regardless of the length of each individual project they’re working on.

Dashes and non-breaking spaces
These searches are my final wow tools! If, like me, you regularly work on documents riddled with hyphens that should be spaced en dashes or closed-up em dashes, or you want to ensure that all those space-separated numbers and measurements are not going to end up falling over the cliff, you’ll adore this function.

Again, these are issues that can be corrected using Word’s find/replace tool, but being able to consolidate the searches within the PerfectIt platform is simply another time-saver.

The fewer programs I have to use to get high-quality consistency within the framework of my client’s brief, the more time I save and the better my hourly rate.

A few final comments
One of the big plusses of PerfectIt is its stability. Despite the fact that it’s often asked to work on very large Word documents and check a tonne of stuff, it doesn’t crash.

This was true for older versions, and PerfectIt 3 is no different. For me, this is important – I feel confident when I’m using it.

​I also think US$99 for a permanent licence that never expires and permits me to upload PerfectIt onto my laptop and desktop for no extra charge is great value for money. However, I do want that US$99 to offer me a product that’s fit for purpose. PerfectIt 3 is.

If you’re someone who’s reluctant to use software to complement your beady eye, I’d urge you to try this. I don’t say this within the framework of one of those human-vs-machine arguments. Rather, it’s about time.

Even if your eyes are so beady that you will spot every single hyphen that should be an en rule, every double space that should be a single, every missing closing quotation mark, every comma in a large number that should be a non-breaking space, every Mrs. that should be a Mrs, every heading with initial capital letters that should be in sentence case, and so on, using a program such as PerfectIt enables you to make all of those hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of changes more quickly.

That’s something that can’t be argued with – it’s a fact that PerfectIt works faster than my hand, so why would I not reduce the likelihood of eyestrain and RSI by getting it to do the donkey work?

The faster I work to bring high-quality consistency to my clients’ files, the sooner I can get down to the business of actually reading the text word by word and line by line, for sense and context.

​The more efficient I am, the better my hourly rate. Increased efficiency means I can accept more projects from more clients because I have more time.

I want my business to be profitable. I want my clients to be thrilled with the quality of my work, so much so that they retain my services. PerfectIt is one tool that enables those two ‘wants’ to sit at the same table with ease.

If you're a professional proofreader or copyeditor, you probably already think Word's styles function is one of its best functions. Styles save us so much time!

​We used to be able to grab styles from one project and use them in another (by creating Style Sets) and that was a huge time-saver.

I was sorry to lose Style Sets when I upgraded to Office 365 (for PC).

I used to create styles for a particular client, save them as a Style Set, and open them in other files as and when I needed them.

​This came in handy in three situations:

Proofreading and copyediting for clients who sent me multiple chapter files for a single job.

Proofreading and copyediting for clients who sent me single files for multiple jobs, sometimes weeks or months apart.

Proofreading and copyediting for series authors.

There is a solution for those who are editing or proofreading on a PC using Word 2016. It's a little long-winded compared with the old method, but it does the job.

Either read and follow steps 1–10 below, or watch a short video in which I walk you through the process.

​1. Open up the document you want to import styles from and save it as a .dotx (template). Close this file. Consider naming your new template such that it’s easily identifiable in the future (e.g. PublisherXStyles.dotx or AuthorNameStyles.dotx). I like to keep my style templates in a distinct folder for ease of access.

2. Now open the document you want to import styles into.

​3. Make sure the Developer tab is available on your ribbon. To do this, open Word. Choose File, Options, Customize Ribbon. Ensure that Developer is checked. Click OK.

4. Click on the Developer tab.

5. Select Document Template.

6. Click on the Organizer button.

7. Select the Close File button.

8. Now the button has changed to Open File. Click on it and browse for the template you want to import styles from.

9. After you’ve selected your file, it will show up in the Styles available in: box. In the window above, you’ll see a list of all the styles available for import (use the toolbar to scroll up and down if you can’t find what you want). Now click on the style you want to import and press the Copy button.

​If you want to copy a group of styles next to each other, use Shift-click to select. If you want to copy several styles that are not next to each other, use Ctrl-click to select.

​Bingo – your new styles will show up in the left-hand window of the Organizer box.

10. Close the Organizer pane and head over to the Home tab on the ribbon. Your imported styles will now show up in the Styles pane.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.